Up on the walls were the deathly still bodies of people, stuck there like flies on flypaper. Glued in place with elasticlike strands of membrane stretched to hold them securely. Johner stared, dumbstruck with horror, at the figure closest to him.
Behind Johner, Distephano found a light control, and flipped it on, making the gunman jump. A small reading spot suddenly illuminated the dead man hanging nearest him. It was a researcher, still in his white coat, the name "Kinloch" stenciled on his pocket. His face a mask of agony, forever contorted in his last death throes, his eyes open wide. His white coat was soaked with his own blood. It looked as if something had detonated inside him, bursting out through his chest. Or maybe chewed its way out, Johner thought, sickened. Kinloch's lungs and entrails were plainly visible.
Distephano moved the small light, scanning the other bodies attached to the wall. They were all like Kinloch. All dead. All with the same hideous wound. They must've been people who'd worked here in this lab. He spotted a few names on lab coats—Williamson, Sprague, Fontaine.... It wouldn't be so bad, Johner told himself, if they all didn't have their names on them. If they were nameless.
Most of the group reacted with gasps or moans and even Johner, who had thought he had seen it all several times over, had to look away. He knew if he managed to survive this ordeal, this was one scene he would never forget.
Ripley just stared at the bodies, seemingly unmoved, as if this were a sight she'd witnessed so many times it was too commonplace to register with her anymore.
Then Johner spied a cryotube with someone still inside it. This is one of those hibernators we snatched and delivered. He moved over to it, saw that the lid was partially opened. He opened it up all the way. There was a woman inside. Her chest was blown out, too, her face all contorted in pain.
"I must be dreaming!" he muttered, but this time, there would be no waking up.
To his own dismay, Johner found himself face-to-face with his own culpability. You delivered her here for this. You kidnapped her and all the others and didn't ask no questions. Just take the money and run. And now you've brought about your own destruction. Look at her face. And the face of all the others on the wall. That's gonna be you. And you thought you were ugly before. Johner was suddenly flooded with a nearly uncontrollable need to vomit. He breathed in sharply, turned away from the sarcophagus, and quelled the urge.
Suddenly, Christie was beside him, offering silent support. Johner was glad of it, glad of the big man's presence. "Let's keep moving," Christie said quietly. Johner nodded, pulling himself together.
They continued through the lab, finding it littered with evidence of the Aliens' occupation. His feet alternately stuck to the floor in splatters of blood or skidded in globs of spattered human tissue.
They hit another darkened area and moved even slower. A flickering neon light acted like a strobe, splashing intermittent light and dark over the nightmare landscape of the wrecked and altered lab. Beside him, Vriess raised his weapon, stretching from the chair to tap the malfunctioning light, but that only made it strobe harder.
There was so much equipment in here, so much stuff, the place was a warren of hidey-holes and corners, everything lit in alternating shadow and light. It was nerve-racking.
Ripley was back on point, as they examined their surroundings, slowly moving forward the whole time. Johner scanned everything, straining his eyes. One of those huge black dudes with all its external tubing would look like part of the scenery in here. Johner stared through the strobing light. Pipes, equipment, desks, cubbyholes, pipes, face, more pipes. Johner blinked, had that been a face hiding among that equipment? Ripley registered first, swinging back to look, as Johner and Christie saw it next. The light strobed again. There it was. A face, a pale, terrified face, eyes wide in panic.
Suddenly, the body attached to the face erupted from its cramped hiding place. The man was holding something long, like a pipe. Screaming, he launched himself at the nearest target—Ripley—and swung. She was off balance, for once, unprepared, and took the blow hard, toppling over.
Instantly, Christie was at her side, blocking another blow.
Johner spun, aiming, and screamed, "DROP IT! DROP IT, DAMN YOU!" He was so wired, it was everything he could do to keep from firing at the offender. His adrenaline was pumping wildly.
The others were all just as focused, just as hyped.
Christie, still protecting the recovering Ripley, yelled, "Calm down! Everybody ease up and calm down!"
The man folded back into his hole, all crouched and small. Miraculously, the neon lights suddenly burst on clearly.
Instantly, everyone froze, the entire company keeping their guns aimed on the cringing man. Ripley shook her head, as if a major head blow like that was just something you shook off. She stood.
"Drop the rod, man!" Christie shouted at the whimpering figure. The stranger was trembling uncontrollably. "Do it!"
The man glanced at them, his eyes huge, the picture of stark terror. "Get away!" he ordered, but his voice was shaking too hard for anyone to take him seriously. The attack had obviously taken every bit of bravado he could summon. The pipe he was holding clattered to the floor. He peered, baffled, from face to face, finally asking weakly, "What's going on?" Slowly, fearfully, he crawled out of his hiding place.
Johner could see the name "Purvis" stenciled onto his coveralls. Damn. Another one of them sleepers we took.
Christie moved forward, still tense, still wired. "Purvis, what's going on is that we're getting the fuck off this ghost ship."
Purvis blinked, obviously totally confused. He was sweating profusely, the smell of fear radiating off him in waves. "What ship?" he asked. "Where am I? I was in cryo on the way to Xarem, to be on the work crew for the nickel refinery...."
Christie and Johner glanced at each other, then had to look away. Even Wren was trying to be somewhere else.
Purvis continued. "I wake up, I don't understand.
... Then ... then ... I saw something... horrible.... It suffocated me He looked like he was about to break down in sobs.
Call stepped up, took over, and for once, Johner was grateful. "Look," she said to Purvis, "you come with us. It's too dangerous here for you."
Johner and Christie exchanged a look, then both shrugged. Johner guessed they owed him something for kidnapping him, even though none of them had a clue he'd end up as Alien food.
Suddenly, Ripley moved up beside Purvis. He flinched and cringed away, but all she did was ... sniff him? Johner could smell the guy from five feet away, and he sure wasn't wearing any perfume.
"Leave him," Ripley said, as flatvoiced as usual. Call spun on her. "Fuck you! We're not leaving anyone on this boat."
Ripley's expression never changed. "He's got one inside him. I can smell it."
Purvis started twitching. The man looked like he was on the verge of a total breakdown. "Inside me? What's inside me?"
Johner's skin crawled, as if there were a thousand ants marching over him. All of them with silver teeth. He said to Christie, "Shit, I don't want one of those things birthing anywhere near my ass."
Vriess had wheeled up alongside them. "It's a bad risk."
Call was ready to take them all on. "We can't just leave him."
Damn, didn't she ever get tired? Johner wondered wearily.
Vriess tried to reason with her. Good idea, Johner thought, since he was probably the only one who could. "I thought you came here to stop them from spreading. "
She looked torn by Vriess's words. She turned to Wren. "Isn't there a process, can't you stop it?" Christie shook his head. "We've got no time for that!"
Wren wouldn't look at Purvis. "I couldn't do it here. The lab's torn apart."
Christie spoke softly to Call. "I could do him. Painless. Back of the head. Might be the best way."
The old softy, Johner thought, looking at the big man.
Call shook her head, upset. "There's gotta be another way. If we freeze him...?"
Pu
rvis was looking from one to the other of them, getting more and more panicky. He stared down at his own chest. "What's in-fucking-side me?"
All eyes were on him, and, Johner realized, they were all embarrassed, even Distephano. They were all culpable here, every one of them.
Wren finally said quietly, "A parasite. A foreign element that...."
Ripley moved forward, clearly impatient with all the bullshit. "There's a monster in your chest," she declared. Right in his face, point-blank range. "These guys"—she cocked a thumb back at the Betty crew— "hijacked your ship and sold your cryotube to this guy." She indicated Wren with a nod of her head. "And he put an Alien in you. In a few hours, it'll punch its way through your rib cage, and you'll die. Any questions?"
Oh, that is one cold bitch, Johner thought admiringly.
Purvis, wide-eyed, could only stammer, "Who... who are you?"
Still looking him dead in the eye, unflinching, she said, "I'm the monster's mother." Then she turned that laserlike stare on Wren until he cringed.
Ripley started heading toward the exit, back on point. She was finished with this issue.
Obviously taking her cue from Ripley's straightforward manner, Call pushed her way past Johner, grabbed Purvis's arm, and announced abruptly, "He comes with us. We can freeze him on the Betty, and the doctor can remove it later. "
Everyone stared at Wren. He nodded. "All right." Johner blinked. He couldn't believe they were all going along with this, just like that. He loomed over the small woman. "Since when are you in fucking charge?"
She glared back at him brazenly. "Since you were born without balls."
Before Johner could fire something back, Vriess was between them. "Ease off, people."
Christie had moved over to Purvis and started herding him after Ripley. "Come with us. You might even live. Get twitchy on me, and you'll be shot."
Grumbling about the whole mess, Johner moved with the group as they proceeded through the lab.
10
Cloning storage facility? Ripley read the sign over the final lab they had to traverse, but the words didn't really register. She was still on point.
Distephano went to one of the consoles; his hands moved over the controls. "We're past the moons of Jupiter," he told them.
Ripley knew she should feel some sense of urgency, some compelling sense of action, but the only thing driving her was self-preservation. Like any animal, she thought with bitter acceptance. Just like them. She moved her mind away from the Aliens, fearing they might sense her if she did. How long would they be too occupied to come for her?
They passed in front of yet another in an endless series of doors, with legends on them that were meaningless to Ripley. But at the next door—
She suddenly froze.
There was something in there. Someone in there.
In spite of the bottomless emptiness Ripley felt— had been feeling since her birth—she suddenly experienced a ripple of fear. Her senses on hyperalert, she turned back to the door. On the glass window inset in the door was a sign.
1 — 7.
Slowly, she turned and approached the door, staring at the inscription.
Looking down, she pulled the shirt away from her inner arm and stared at the number—8.
Just walk away, she told herself. Just move. She closed her eyes, a shudder traveling over her body. There was something terrible behind that door, and it had to do with her.
Distephano had moved away from the console and gone ahead of her. "That's not the way," he said helpfully.
Christie stepped beside her, obviously worried by her strange behavior. "Ripley, we got no time for sightseeing."
It didn't matter. They could go on without her. She knew that she had to go in there.
Suddenly, Wren was there. Even he sounded worried. "Ripley... don't."
She had to. She opened the door, stood there for a moment, her mind trying to come to grips with what she knew she was about to see.
All this time, she'd worried about her lack of feelings, her lack of humanity. And suddenly, she was flooded with feelings, drowning in them.
Pain. Horror. Disgust. Remorse. Heartrending sorrow.
The others hung back in the doorway, confused, but clearly unwilling to go on without her.
Ripley found herself staring at a room full of incubators. No, not incubators, not anymore.
Preservation units. High-tech storage jars. For my sisters.
The first unit held an organism the size of a fully developed human fetus. It was totally deformed, barely recognizable, as it floated in its preservative liquid. It was labeled Number 1.
Not "it," Ripley told herself, she. She touched the jar reverently, and moved on.
The next unit, marked Number 2 was the size of a small child. It, too, was grossly deformed, half Alien and half human. Ellen Ripley's face on that terrible, elongated head. Dorsal horns erupted from her back. Ripley twitched her shoulders, feeling the scars alongside her own spine.
Number 3 had a tail and no face. She was about two years old.
Number 4 was about four years old, had an exoskeleton, and the rigid, fanged tongue, emerging from a half-human face that couldn't support it.
Something fell from Ripley's eyes; she touched her cheek. Wetness. Tears? From a monster? She almost laughed.
Number 5 had nearly reached adulthood. There were dorsal horns, but they were clearly vestigial. The head was completely Alien, a Queen's head, grotesquely grafted onto a twisted version of a human female body. Her tears were falling freely now.
Eight of us. But how many hundreds, how many thousands of cells were started that never got beyond the eight-cell stage, the sixteen-cell stage? I guess they only labeled us if we reached a certain stage of advanced development.
She thought of all the researchers working on her cells, slaving over them, week after week, month after month, year upon year. All of them dead now, fodder for their own machinations. It didn't make her feel any better.
She came to Number 6. Her face again on a bizarre, elongated head, but nearly adult, looking so much like her. The hands the same as her hands, with the same strange long nails. The eyes were open. Her eyes.
Seeing—
What? My future? One more monster in the collection?
She moved on, in a nightmare world all her own.
Number 7 was written not on a preservation tube, but on the side of a large, square, opaque unit. Ripley noticed electrical wires going into it. She saw gauges registering—something.
Her sense of dread was overwhelming as she walked around the unit.
It's not a jar at all! It's an ICU unit, complete with hydro-bed, and all the necessary equipment to...
She started shaking wildly, her mouth open, her eyes wide in horror.
On the bed was a living being, if you could call what this organism was experiencing, life.
The monster had Ripley's face on a misshapen head that grew only spare bits of brown wavy hair. Twisted limbs were in restraints, held fast, even as myriad tubes fed nutrients into the arms, keeping the thing alive. Bright, intelligent, human eyes stared at Ripley, seeing her.
Recognizing her.
My sister! Ripley thought, aghast.
The mouth opened and silver fangs sat within. Ropes of clear mucus drooled from the mouth as the monster hissed her recognition.
Then she begged. Two words. "Kill me!" She begged it from the one creature in all the universe she knew would grant her wish. The human eyes in Ripley's face wept, huge, sticky tears that ran down her face. The monster twisted in her restraints, as if to plead, implore.
Ripley staggered back, repulsed. She uttered a soft cry, and wept uncontrollably. Suddenly, Call was beside her. She was holding something big, something vaguely familiar.
"It's a flamethrower," Call said softly. "Distephano found it in a weapons cache he knew about."
Ripley looked at it, blinking away her tears. It was familiar, she realized. She turned back, took a last look a
t her sister. The monster in the bed writhed, opening its obscene mouth, dripping ropes of sticky saliva over her chin, the bedclothes. Her eyes said everything her tortured brain couldn't.
Ripley loaded the gun automatically, and fired on the tethered creature. She made herself deaf to the terrible half-human, half-Alien screams, as she fired again, again, again, melting the unit, the tubes, the restraints, demolishing everything.
She started backing out, the weapon in her hand feeling good, feeling right. She fired again, hitting each storage unit as she retreated. Alarms sounded, and the ship tried to defend itself, but there seemed to be no water available to the sprinkler system, and Ripley's destructive rampage went unchecked. One by one the beakers exploded in a mess of plasti-glass and steel, as she kept backing away from her own development.
She stopped only when the lab was a melted, burning mess, and the gun was empty. Ripley dropped the flamethrower at the door, then slammed it shut to contain the fire within.
Her tears were gone. In its place was something far more deadly.
Ripley turned on Wren.
Glancing around desperately, he backed up, looking around for protection. But the others, having seen a glimpse of her hell, moved away from him, letting him know there would be no help for him. Only Call interceded as Ripley advanced on the doctor.
"Ripley... don't do it," Call said softly.
She froze in her tracks, then incredible weariness swamped her. She sagged. "Don't do what?" she whispered desolately.
The tension seeped out of the quiet group. Wren exhaled audibly, and actually had the nerve to look a little smug.
At that instant, Call spun on him and punched him hard, right across the jaw, with all the wiry strength in her small form.
Wren's head snapped back, and he collapsed in a heap at Ripley's feet.
Ripley met the younger woman's eyes and something passed between them, some connection. What it was, she couldn't exactly say.
"Don't do that," Call said, referring to the sucker punch that now made her flex her bruised hand. Call started on down the hall without a second glance at the crumpled scientist.
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