Aliens

by Weston Ochse

  Once again, he retreated to the scientific method.

  It was easy.

  It was safe.

  He couldn’t get his feelings hurt.

  28

  Hypothesis #1: The pathogen, when irradiated and injected into the Ovomorph, will positively affect the Xenomorph morphology.

  * * *

  Hypothesis #2: The pathogen, when irradiated and injected into the human host, will adversely affect the Xenomorph morphology.

  * * *

  With the hypotheses in place, the scientists began their experimentation.

  Hoenikker was asked to stand back and record data for this first group of tests. Étienne and Kash would be the primary researchers while Cruz supervised the process. Kash would be taking readings, as well.

  Hypotheses one and two were tested on the subjects and eggs in Containment Rooms One and Two. Containment Room One saw the injection of the irradiated pathogen into the Ovomorph. There the test subject was an elderly female of African lineage.

  Containment Room Two saw the injection of the irradiated pathogen into the test subject—a morose looking man in his forties or fifties who was severely overweight. The injection must have made the process seem more real, and he became agitated almost immediately.

  After fifteen minutes, the remainder of the travel cases were removed, and the Ovomorphs began to approach room temperature. Hoenikker could tell immediately when they had recovered from the effects of the cold. The top of the egg structure began to twitch and quiver, as if it could smell the presence of the human test subjects.

  The test subject in Containment Room One didn’t run or act agitated. She merely sat with her back facing the egg, perhaps unwilling to face it. She appeared to have made peace with her situation, and was just waiting to play her part. Hoenikker considered her smart. If it had been him, he wouldn’t have wanted to face what was coming next, either.

  He stole a glance to Containment Room Three where Monica sat, watching them like a cat might, sitting in the window of a home. She wore a disinterested look, almost laconic, as she observed everything around her. Hoenikker wondered if, when the time came, she would be like the woman in Containment Room One, or like the man in Containment Room Two, who, even now, scrabbled at the glass, begging to be let free, his stomach bobbing as if it had been filled with too much jelly.

  The intercom was turned off, but there was no mistaking what he was screaming. Hoenikker prayed that if he was ever in that position, he wouldn’t behave the same way. But then, he couldn’t be sure how he’d behave when faced with the inevitable prospect of being face-hugged by a Xenomorph. Although he’d rather be like the elderly woman, he feared he might end up like the fat man.

  Each of the test subjects had been fitted with transmitters that provided live health data. Hoenikker made sure these were streaming as his vid display recorded the results.

  Then, as inexorably as he’d been told, the top of each Ovomorph began to peel back, and a creature began to appear. At first it was the tail, whipping about, snapping, the end cracking the air. This he knew would eventually wrap around the test subject’s neck to hold the face-hugger in place. He’d read the literature and watched the vid, but seeing it in person held him fast. Not only was he observing the morphology of an alien entity, he was also witnessing the impending death of a human being.

  The face-hugger in Containment Room Two was faster— perhaps because of the behavior of the test subject. Although he had nowhere to run, the face-hugger didn’t yet understand the parameters of its captivity. Not only did it whip itself free of the egg, moving in a blur, but it attacked the man’s back, scraping him, forcing him to spin, thus making the job of the face-hugger that much easier.

  The creature attached itself to the man’s face, so Hoenikker couldn’t see his expression, but he could imagine the wide eyes and the strangled scream, quickly silenced by the pressure of something entering the throat. The tail came around and wrapped itself once, then twice around the man’s enormous neck. He clawed at the Xenomorph, but it was of no use.

  Staggering to the center of the room, he spun one hundred and eighty degrees until he was facing toward them. His face was completely covered by what looked like the carapace of a large crab. He staggered again, fell to his knees, then onto his side.

  Hoenikker checked to make sure the health data was still streaming, and shuddered.

  The man was still alive.

  Over in Containment Room One, things were moving a bit slower. The woman still sat with her back to the Ovomorph. The face-hugger had already crawled out of the egg and seemed to be regarding its imminent host. In no hurry, it moved to her. When it touched her back, she tensed, but otherwise made no move. She knew there was nowhere to go. Knew it was her end. She just didn’t want to have to see it happen.

  When it did, it happened fast. The face-hugger’s tail latched around her neck and it propelled itself around in an arc, like a rock climber with a rope, landing on her face as if it were the face of a mountain it wanted to conquer.

  She fell backward.

  Her body twitched several times.

  Then the tail tightened.

  All the while, Hoenikker ensured that the data was recording. After a few moments, Kash approached.

  “It’s different seeing it in person,” she said, wiping sweat from her upper lip. Hoenikker realized his mouth was dry. He swallowed and licked his lips.

  “Sure is.”

  “Some believe they were made to do this,” she said. “Others believe that it was evolution.”

  “That evolution could create something that needs another creature to survive makes the universe seem cruel,” he said.

  “Tapeworms, roundworms, and flukes have been invasive to humans since the dawn of time,” she said.

  “I don’t see them busting out of their hosts’ chests.”

  “They don’t, you’re right. But give it a million years. Who knows?”

  “How long does it take?” he asked, then followed up by being more specific. “I mean, to go from face-hugger to chestburster.”

  “Not as long as you’d think. The gestation period is brisk. Far faster than one would believe. But then, the host doesn’t need to survive the transition.”

  “I’m sure it wreaks havoc,” he said. “Crash and burn the system.”

  “That’s all we really are, just a bag of DNA,” she replied. “The process doesn’t care what’s left.”

  He stared at the woman lying on her back, the face-hugger doing what it did, the tail wrapped around her neck.

  “But for the moment it knows to keep the host alive. The evolution seems too impressive to be natural. It seems engineered. I couldn’t imagine a better way to create an army. Gestate in the bodies of your enemies, then be reborn with acid for blood.”

  “Maybe that’s why they’re here.”

  “If they’re part of an army, then who is the general?”

  She didn’t answer, nor did he expect her to. She moved on, recording data as it came.

  “How are you holding up?” Cruz asked, stepping up beside Hoenikker. He glanced at the taller man, surprised at the attention.

  “Better than I expected.” He hesitated as he watched the body in Containment Room Two twitch and shudder. “I thought it would bother me more, but knowing they’re doing this with intention helps mollify my apprehension.”

  Cruz nodded, observing both test subjects and their face-huggers. Then he turned to Containment Room Three.

  “Will you still feel the same when we get to her?”

  Hoenikker glanced over, then looked down. How could he know until they did it? He wasn’t sure how he’d react. His feelings had changed since they’d spoken. He realized that so much of what he’d felt was like an echo of how he’d felt so long ago. He wasn’t even sure if he still felt the same way—was the idea of loving her, or being in love, a force of habit he’d failed to break even after all these years? It was as if when he’d stopped seeing her, he
’d just shelved his feelings, and never dealt with them.

  “What is it we’re going to do with her?” he asked.

  “Irradiated pathogen for both her and the Ovomorph,” Cruz said. “We’re still in the data accumulation phase. We got lucky with the acid-resistant armor. We’re hoping that after we accumulate enough data, we’ll be sufficiently informed to use Leon-895 DNA to try and create some sort of biological cloaking mechanism to add to the acid resistance.”

  “That would be beneficial for sure,” Hoenikker said, realizing how hollow the words sounded. “Have they found the missing Leon?”

  “Not yet,” Cruz said, frowning as he answered. “We never attached a transponder or a PDT to the creature. Had we done something as fucking simple as that, we would have been able to track it. We’re not going to have that problem anymore. All of the test subjects have been tagged with PDTs, as will the chestbursters.”

  “With all the tech we have, I’m surprised it hasn’t been found.”

  “You’d be surprised how big this place really is,” Cruz said absently. Then he turned to Hoenikker. “Keep plugging in the data. Our algorithms will make sense of it, and we can move to the next step.” Then he walked out of the lab, the door closing behind him.

  Hoenikker stared after him, thinking of what the man had shared. Was the place bigger than it seemed to be? Kash had mentioned on several occasions that it was, but he’d never followed up. Why was that? Even as he asked himself, he knew the answer. He was Timothy Hoenikker. He toed the line, didn’t ask questions, didn’t buck the system. He did as he was told.

  Well, maybe that all should change.

  Maybe he should be a little more discerning.

  Maybe he should ask a few more questions before he blindly followed directions.

  Kash called for him, and he turned to assist.

  In Containment Room Two, the woman’s body lay still. At less than six beats a minute, her heart was barely functioning. The face-hugger itself had crawled away and lay dead in a corner. That meant the embryo was in place.

  “Any time now,” she said.

  Hoenikker stared at the woman, and then the data, trying to see patterns in the numbers. Not knowing what to look for didn’t stop him from his attempt to understand. He was a scientist through and through, and trusted in the process. He knew that eventually the pattern would reveal itself, but until then he’d record and push the data.

  “On Earth, there is a wasp that lays its eggs in a live tarantula,” Étienne said as he approached. “Most call it a tarantula hawk because of its size, but pomplidae is definitely a wasp. It first paralyzes the spider, then drags it to a hidden site for brooding. Once there, it lays a single egg on the underside of the tarantula—which isn’t dead, mind you. It remains alive as the larva grows and then hatches. Once hatched, it burrows a hole into the tarantula’s body and begins to eat its way through, avoiding the large organs until the very last. The idea is to keep the spider alive as long as possible, because it’s the larva’s only food source.”

  Hoenikker shuddered at the idea of being eaten alive from the inside.

  “I often wonder which is worse,” Étienne said. “Being eaten from the inside, or dying a quick death as an alien bursts from your chest.” He gestured to the containment room with the man. He was sitting up and scratching the side of his head as if nothing was wrong. There, again, the face-hugger had crawled away to die. “Do you think he’s being eaten from the inside, like he’s a tarantula?”

  “I think being eaten from the inside out has to be the worst,” Hoenikker said. “Knowing that something is inside you has to be terrifying.”

  “But look at him.” Étienne pointed at the man, who was now standing and peering into the empty egg. “Does he look scared?”

  Hoenikker checked the data. “I show a doubling in serotonin production.”

  “Maybe that’s the solution. Like a frog in a pot of water that slowly comes to a boil. Make someone happy that they have a parasite in their body, and they won’t mind as much.”

  “Is that what the Xenomorphs are? Parasites?”

  “What else would you call them?”

  Monsters was what Hoenikker wanted to say.

  * * *

  The waiting seemed worse than the implantation had been. They remained at their stations for what felt like an eternity, but was in reality a little more than eight hours—tense the entire time with anticipation. Cruz didn’t return, but Hoenikker, Kash, and Étienne didn’t dare leave.

  Then it happened.

  More suddenly than he’d expected.

  One moment, she was still; then she arched her back and her chest erupted as two sets of telegraphing jaws pierced free to the air. Claws gripped the pieces of ripped chest and the chestburster pulled itself free. The woman’s blood pooled as the creature moved off and onto the floor, more tail and teeth than anything else.

  Her vitals hit bottom as death overtook her.

  Meanwhile, the creature moved to the back corner of the containment room and huddled there, a hatchling programmed to protect itself until it grew larger.

  The man in his containment room remained unaware of what had happened to the woman. He’d finished idly inspecting the egg and had moved to the glass. He was in the process of testing it with his fingers when he suddenly got a look like he was about to vomit. He doubled over, then straightened.

  Then his chest exploded.

  Blood spattered the glass as the chestburster shot free. One moment the man was staring in surprise down at the hole in his chest, the next he was sagging to his knees, falling on his side as gravity stole his mobility, forever and a day.

  29

  The next day found them doing the same thing.

  As well as the next.

  And the next.

  The scientific method and data modeling.

  Hoenikker spent the nights watching one video in particular. The taking of Test Subject #3.

  He’d been through the data dozens of times, but never tired in disassembling her destruction. Which was strange, considering what they’d once shared. At first, he’d felt concerned about his lack of emotional response. But then, after watching it, he’d felt as if she’d gotten what she wanted— some semblance of finality to her place in the universe.

  Monica had never really been happy. She’d always needed someone else to make her complete. That she’d once chosen him to complete her showed her own inability to make the correct decisions. A broken bolt twisted by a broken tool into a broken system—doomed to failure.

  In the end, her death had been more similar to the woman’s than the man’s, in that she never saw it coming. Sure, when the egg had released the face-hugger, she’d stood her ground. Balled fists down at her sides, straight backed, she’d only flinched a little as the thing attached itself to her, wrapping its tail three times around her slender neck. Instead of falling, she’d backed toward the ledge near the back of the containment room and sat, resting her fists in her lap as she leaned on it for balance.

  Her stoicism was what kept him coming back to the video. That she seemed so accepting of her situation demonstrated how much she’d changed in the intervening years. He’d rewatched the first half of the video no less than twenty times, trying to see if there had been any other reaction he could discern, but as often as he’d watched, he couldn’t see any.

  The second half of the video was hardest to watch.

  She hadn’t fared as well in the last three minutes and forty-seven seconds.

  The face-hugger had been long gone and her serotonin levels were maxed when the thing inside of her began to move. She felt it, and tore her shirt away. Her breasts hung heavy, nipples pointed down and no longer in the bloom of youth. He’d known and mapped them when they were younger, but they weren’t the focus of his attention. Instead, he stared at the lump that continually pressed against the inside of her chest and abdomen. Tentative at first, the chestburster wasn’t ready for the full Monty. Instead, it
pressed its face and jaws against the inside of her skin, revealing itself even before it broke free.

  Each time it moved within her she’d shriek, then force herself to stand still. It was as if her single fuck you to the universe was to try not to panic, instead provide as much of herself to the witnesses as possible. For the sake of science? It had to be for the sake of science, because no one could possibly get off on the destruction of a human being in such a way. No one he’d ever want to know, anyway.

  After three minutes and forty-seven seconds of it acting as if it wanted to be free, it burst out of her chest, falling to the ground where it lay stunned for long enough that they might have thought it was dead.

  The first several times his eyes were on the chestburster, wondering if it was going to live, then somehow insanely pleased that it had. Later he’d watched her, and noted that she hadn’t died immediately. She’d managed to live for almost thirty seconds longer, her hand coming up and feeling the gaping hole in her chest, her fingers feeling around inside. Then falling to her knees. Staring out the containment room window, her face pinched with pain but also angry, as if asking if this was what they wanted her to do—be a tool for someone’s experiment, allowing an alien to gestate inside her all so a mega-corp could create something from which it could profit.

  He told himself this and then he argued with himself, even knowing it was specious.

  She died for a reason.

  Monica died because she wanted to.

  She died because she’d murdered someone, and had to pay the price.

  It was almost as if she’d had the last laugh. He might have been projecting, but even if he hadn’t known her, he would have understood her stance and wondered at his own morality—of allowing a thinking and breathing human being to be used in such a manner.

  The corporation be damned.

  * * *

  The Xenomorphs grew amazingly fast. The first three had already reached full adulthood and stalked back and forth inside their containment rooms. The bodies and the vestiges of the previous morphology had been removed via mechanical means.