Louie awoke with a gasp. The momentary rush of panic hit him, and subsided just as quickly. His first few times, he had woken up screaming. Now, he barely flinched. He thought he opened his eyes, only to realise they already were. It was not his eyes; it was the lights. They were off, and the recovery room was quiet as the grave. He sat up, gently massaging his throat. More from the thought of what had happened than actual discomfort. Every time, he would remember a little more of the process. Perhaps next time, he would be awake for all of it…

  “Doctor Challis?” he called, his voice still weak and dry.

  Silence. He wrapped his arms around himself, feeling the gooseflesh texture of his skin. He wasn’t imagining it; it was cold in here. Delta was always a little stuffy, especially on Level 4, but now he was starting to shiver uncontrollably. A power outage, perhaps. He scanned the room, now that his eyes had adjusted to the tiny sliver of available light, and spied a lab coat tossed over the back of a chair. He hopped off the bed, the shock of the cold floor sending a jolt through his body as he padded over to the chair and seized the coat. Several sizes too big, the hem was almost down to the floor. More like a bathrobe than a coat. It must have looked comical, but it was better than nothing.

  “Doctor Challis?” he called again, more forcefully this time. Still, nothing but silence. It didn’t make sense. He should be in pre-op, with half a dozen doctors fussing over him, and at least one of the screws standing guard, just in case. Power outage or not, they would not have just left their prize asset unattended. Something was definitely wrong. Suddenly, he felt rather vulnerable, and a quiet, uneasy thought formed in the back of his mind. It was distant, and muted, but it was there. Some long-forgotten feeling that was now scraping at the edge of his consciousness: fear. He placed his hand on his chest, tracing his scar with his fingers.

  He tried the door, and found it unlocked. The corridor was barely lit, and cold, and there was something else. Delta always had a bleached, sterile scent to it. One he had long since grown accustomed to, but now the air was tinged with a hint of putrid rot. Like roadkill baking in the Louisiana summer sun. He crept along the deserted corridor, the cold metal of the grated floor chilled his bare feet, but something deep inside his gut told him to move quietly. He stopped when he reached the wreck of what had been an internal door. It occurred to him that perhaps someone had escaped, but he dismissed that as an impossibility. Besides, it hadn’t just been kicked in. Rather, it had been smashed in and torn from its hinges, and it folded inwards, towards him. No, something had come in from outside. Something strong. He slipped through, careful not to cut himself on the mangled plastic and sheared metal.

  Ordinarily, his time on Level 4 would have been spent strapped to a gurney, so although he had been here more than a dozen times, he was not overly familiar with the layout. Instead, he followed the path of destruction, retracing the steps of whoever, or whatever, had rampaged through Delta, and it did not take him long to find the security door that led up to Level 3. He had no means to open it, not that it mattered. The massive hatch stood wide open; its locks disabled. Or, rather, destroyed. It did not make any sense. Delta was a fortress, and while they might not have given a damn about him, or Angel, or Babineaux, or any of the other poor lost bastards down here, if there was one thing they did care about, it was security.

  The sound of breaking glass somewhere in the distance made him freeze. It was the first sign of life he had come across since waking, but now he was not so sure that was a positive. It sounded like it was above him, somewhere on L3. He pondered for a moment, considering his options. He looked uneasily over his shoulder, down the dark hallway from which he had come, and shuddered. He would take his chances on 3. Besides, what did he have to lose. He had to find Doctor Yau, or Challis, or Mercer, and he had to find them fast. The clock was ticking.

  *

  He slinked along the empty corridor of L3, and continued to follow the sound of crashing lab equipment and breaking glass. Whoever or whatever it was, clearly was not concerned with stealth. Now on 3, he had a better sense of his bearings. The holding cells were on the far side from here, which meant this was Medical. Not the claustrophobic super-max facility that housed Implantation down on 4, the L3 med bay was just that, a med bay, and was almost welcoming in comparison. He followed the noise to a half-open door, and spied the beam of the flashlight as it cast a frantic white circle across the floor. Like a moth, the light drew him closer. Slowly he pressed on the door, only to be immediately betrayed by a loud creak that echoed like a whip crack in the empty darkness of the corridor. A large, shadowy figure froze, and Louie was temporarily blinded the bright light.

  “Timex?” came a human voice, and he was immediately filled with relief. Not only was it human, but with the distinctive accent it was instantly recognisable.

  “Van Der Beek?” he asked quietly.

  “Yeah,” said the big man, turning his flashlight towards the floor.

  “What the hell is going on?” he asked. He almost had to suppress a nervous laugh. Asking it out loud made the question seem woefully inadequate for the situation.

  “We’ve got an intruder. A “yautja”,” he explained as he continued to rummage through drawers and cabinets. “Yeah, I’d never heard of it either, but trust me you do not want to meet it.”

  Van Der Beek was right, he had never heard of such a thing. But right now, he had more pressing issues.

  “Bingo,” said Van Der Beek, holding up his prize. Louie thought it looked a bit like a laser scalpel, and it was only now that he could see that his hands were cuffed. Things were making even less and less sense. “Gimme a hand here, would you?” he said, laying his wrists flat on the counter. “Trust that idiot Parker to die without his own goddamn keys on him.”

  Parker was dead? He did not think Van Der Beek would kill him. Not without reason, anyway. Had it been the “yautja”? Louie approached cautiously. He did not dislike the South African, but that did not mean he trusted him either.

  “I ain’t gonna bite,” he said, seeming to sense his apprehension. “Grab the flashlight, and take this,” he held out his hand, confirming it was indeed a laser scalpel. Just cut the chain, and be careful. I like my hands where they are.”

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  Shining the torch, he took the scalpel and pressed the cutting tip to the chain. After a few seconds the polished steel began to glow, and then drip, but this was still going to take a few minutes. This was already by far the longest conversation he had ever had with Van Der Beek, or any of the screws for that matter, but so far, the man had been relatively forthcoming. Besides, they had a couple of minutes.

  “Where are we?” he asked quietly.

  “Level 3 Medical.”

  “No, I mean, we’re not on Earth, are we?” He could feel Van Der Beek raise his eyebrows, but he did not dare take his eyes off the chain.

  “Jesus, Timex, you don’t even know where you are?” asked the big man incredulously.

  “I don’t even know what year it is,” he replied, without a hint of sarcasm.

  “Twenty-two thirty-eight. November tenth, or eleventh. We’re in Rayleigh’s Rest. It’s a Wey-Yu research outpost. LV-784, Zeta Reticuli. Brah, how can you not know this?”

  Three years, Louie thought to himself. He could not decide if it had seemed shorter, or longer.

  “I was on Earth. I volunteered off the street for some Weyland-Yutani backed medical trial, and I woke up here,” said Louie flatly. He could feel Van Der Beek studying him, trying to decide how much of his story to believe.

  “So, why did you sign up?” he asked, after a pause.

  “Got it,” said Louie and the chain snapped with an audible ping.

  “Nice work. I’ll get the bracelets later,” said Van Der Beek, rubbing at his wrists, and took the scalpel and flashlight without asking. It seemed the big man did not trust him either. Louie did not protest. He was almost a foot shorter, and not much more than half his bodyweight. A laser scalpel would not have done him much good, even if he had intended to use it.

  “I need to find Doctor Yau,” he said.

  “He’s probably dead, and we will be too if we don’t get the fuck out of here. I think I know where that big bastard is heading, and I don’t want to be here when whatever the hell Frankenstein and co were cooking down on Level 5 gets loose. Shit, they’re probably loose already. Feel free to come with, but I ain’t sticking around,” said Van Der Beek. Louie had never seen him so agitated, but it did not change anything.

  “I can’t,” he said weakly.

  “Suit yourself,” said Van Der Beek, and turned to leave.

  A loud crash caught their attention, Van Der Beek instantly swinging the beam of the torch around to rest on a bent vent covering that had clattered on to the floor. They stared as a wet dripping filled the silence and a translucent, viscous liquid trickled from the hole where the vent had been. A long, raspy hiss emanated from the void as black clawed fingers appeared at the rim, and Louie could only watch as a demonic black shape slithered down from the ceiling, landing on the floor with a heavy thump. The shadow uncoiled, standing to its full height it towered over even Van Der Beek, extending twisted biomechanical limbs and rearing its grotesque phallic-shaped head. Louie instinctively took a step back, and hit the wall, only to realise he had backed up into Van Der Beek’s chest.

  “Don’t…move,” he growled through gritted teeth.

  He stood frozen as the monster glided towards them. Its spindly limbs moving with an unsettling, almost feminine grace. Its black carapace glistening in the beam of the flashlight. It leaned in, its face inches from his, his eyes and throat burned as its acrid breath saturated him. Its bare teeth stuck in a permanent, malevolent grin. It seemed to assess him, by sight or smell he could not tell. He could discern no visible sensory organs at all. The metallic teeth parted, and a wicked set of secondary inner jaws extended menacingly, stopping mere centimetres short of his head. His heart pounded and cold sweat dripped down his back, but he did not dare move, instead keeping his eyes fixated on a spot off to one side, as if to look directly at the creature would send him mad. The nightmare hissed again, and its inner jaws retracted. It turned, tail brushing against his legs as it snaked behind it. The creature turned its eyeless head and took one last brief look at them before it crouched, and with an explosion of movement, rocketed back up into the vent and disappeared. The scrape of its claws on metal growing more faint by the second. Louie let out a long, slow breath. All this time. All this time that is what they had been growing inside of him. Infant, or larval, versions of them anyway. Over and over again. That was what was inside of him right now. He clutched his chest gently as he felt the bottom fall out of his stomach.

  “Fuck me,” cursed Van Der Beek quietly. “Fuck me, I think that was a xenomorph. Jesus Christ, those crazy bliksems were breeding them. We should be dead,” he said with a slight, humourless laugh.

  “It was me,” said Louie.

  “What?”

  “It was me. It didn’t attack because of me,” he said, looking at the floor.

  “What you on about brah?” asked Van Der Beek, regaining his composure.

  “I…I have one inside of me,” he said, as if confessing to some shameful crime.

  “Implantation…” said Van Der Beek, as the pieces fell into place.

  “I need to find Doctor Yau, or one of the other senior surgeons. I need one of them to take it out of me soon, or I’m going to die,” he said meekly.

  “How soon?”

  “Pretty soon,” he said with a whimsy he did not feel. “If I can find some gestacyn, it’ll buy me some time,” he said, allowing himself a glimmer of hope.

  “Gesta-what?” asked Van Der Beek, but something in his voice made Louie uncomfortable. A note of irritation, or impatience.

  “Gestacyn. I know, I think it’s meant to be some kind of joke. It’s a suppressant. It delays the… “birth”. Without it, I’ve got an hour, maybe two, then the embryo is going to chew its way out through my ribcage. It’s happened to others before,” he explained, conscious that his time was already running short.

  “I ain’t going back down there,” he said coldly.

  Louie nodded. He understood, and he hadn’t expected help anyway. It was his problem. A weak “Good luck,” was all he could manage to say, and he headed for the door. If he couldn’t find one of the senior doctors, this was his next best hope. It would mean going back down to 4, and the thought of running into that thing again terrified him, but it wasn’t as if he had much choice. He was almost to the door when the weight of Van Der Beek’s hand on his shoulder stopped him in his tracks.

  “Nothing personal, Timex, but I need you,” said Van Der Beek, and his voice had a hardness to it that he had never heard before.

  “Let me go,” he protested. “I don’t have time.”

  “No, you don’t. But until then, apparently, you’re xeno-proof, and as long as you’re standing next to me, it looks like I am, too. You’re my good luck charm,” he said calmly.

  Louie struggled, but it was pointless. The big man’s strength was incredible. “Then you’ve only got your “good luck charm” for an hour,” he spat, trying a different tact.

  “That’s all I’m gonna need,” said Van Der Beek coldly.

  “You’ll never get off the base. You said this was a Wey-Yu outpost. That means there are Colonial Marines here, right? Turn yourself in. They’ll protect you,” he said, trying to bargain.

  “I ain’t going to prison, Timex. Prison’s been trying to get me my entire life, and I ain’t about to give up now. I hand myself in, the old man will slap the cuffs on me and leave me to rot in a cell.”

  A numb despair overtook him as Van Der Beek marched him out into the corridor. It wasn’t happening to him; he was just watching it happen to someone else. Don’t fight back, it just made them hurt you more. Twelve times he had been implanted, and twelve times he had been spared. Twice as many as anyone else, and any one of them could have been his last. Lucky number thirteen, he thought to himself. Of course it was always going to be this one. That really would be the perfect, ironic end to his pathetic life.

  “I’m sorry, Timex,” said Van Der Beek. “But you’re my ticket out of here. I promise when the time comes, I’ll do it myself. Quick, easy, and painless.”