"Yo, Dwayne. Delivery for you!"
The shout caught his attention instantly, baritone voice was difficult not to hear in the warehouse despite the scurry of work. He lowered the power of the arc-welder before looking away from his current piece of scrap. His expression was one of curiosity, usually if someone wanted to communicate with him it was via the vid-channel; he'd not spoken to anyone outside the work ship for months, even years. So to get something physical baffled him. Communication had dwindled, but it was often difficult to get a connection this far out into space anyway. Personally he preferred it that way, the less he heard the more he liked it.
He stood up with a slight groan, leaning over the work didn't do anything good for his back. The fact that he was also sporting a rather common-place hangover didn't help either. He told himself that he didn't drink often, only as a social aspect. It was denial. He knew he had bottles in his room waiting for him when his shift finished, some of them already empty. The lads he worked with had a long standing poker game last night which was accompanied by stiff drinks. He'd lost and cut out early on, but remained for the entertainment value of the match. In the end a lot of cred-chits had changed hands, he expected repercussions but nothing had come up yet.
Dwayne ran a hand through his hair, his fingers touching the rough, scar torn, skin at the top of his head, trying to get the worst of the feeling out of his throbbing head with just a touch. It wouldn't help. Nothing did. Except maybe another strong coffee. He looked expectantly towards the foreman.
"Bay three," he was told. His brow raised once more, a little higher, questioning.
"Too big to carry, company sent a 'droid with it too." The baritone man was big, broad of shoulder and dark skinned. Reliable almost to a fault and a very fair foreman.
"Artificial Person," Hicks uttered underneath his breath, pulling a packet of cigarettes from his rolled up sleeve. He flicked an old, dodgy plastic lighter a few times before it sparked enough to ignite the cigarette. The bud flared and died as he walked away from his foreman. He'd always been a heavy smoker and the time he spent at the welder made the time between breaks near agony. At some point he'd thought about quitting, now he didn't see the point. After the LV-426 mission everything had changed. He'd lost much more than a few friends and his boyish good looks back on that God forsaken rock, he could have recovered from that, it was when he'd got back that he'd lost his dignity. He'd told himself that Weyland Yutani would go down, they'd be finished. Instead they paid his cheques, kept him quiet and he hid on the ship like a good little soldier.
Under observation as well, most like. He mused to himself exhaling the smoke. He tried his best not to look back and dwell on what had happened at Hadleys Hope. It was difficult when the memories were a physical mar on his face and even after two years he woke up at night drenched in sweat with a strangled scream on his lips. Yet he was alive. That was something. The physical scars he couldn't hide, the mental ones were a different story; when he'd been asked about what had happened to him to cause such a mess of his face and shoulder he lied. A chemical accident in a previous job. There was little point making himself out to be crazy. Common civilians didn't tend to believe in the truth of dark, terrible monsters creeping out of walls, impregnating you with their evil seed. After Acheron he'd had to spend time in quarantine, standard procedure, just to make sure he hadn't been infected by the alien life he'd encountered. He'd been alone during that time, no visitors, and word had leaked out and the rumours spread about his condition. People who knew kept their distance; looked at him with fear and trepidation. His visage didn't help matters. Fights broke out, but back then he had the energy to defend himself and his ordeal; like it meant something. Eventually the fight had drained from him and he tried his best to move on.
Dwayne involuntarily shivered, shaking the memory to the back of his subconscious once more. His life was here now, on board the junker doing whatever maintenance on whatever scraps they found out in the far reaches of space.
"Hey, Dwayne, your blow up girlfriend finally arrived!" One of his fellow workmen jeered as he passed. He was returned with a witless middle-fingered salute. The jests were all in good fun and he knew it. The crew was mixed gender and it was no secret that he'd never tried it on with any of the women on board. Much like quitting smoking. He didn't see the point. Mostly it just made for childish break ups while still having to spend time in the same space. Awkward.
Bay three was relatively quiet. It was usually reserved as a service hatch for when the staff was due a rotation. He'd been serving on the junker for little over a year now and seen the staff rotation twice in that time. People with families to go home to. The last switch had been recent, it's brought a few new faces but mostly the original faces returned. Not many people could cope with time away from their families, he didn't have one so he'd stayed the course.
He noticed it straight away, the wooden crate with the company seal burned onto the over it was the synthetic that he'd been told about. Uncharacteristically arguing with one of the workers. The worker huffed and sighed, leaving the artificial person standing there with a board in his hand.
"Dwayne, your 'droid is a real stick in the ass, won't let me get a sneak-peak in or nothing."
Dwayne laughed off the other worker, it was one of the newer guys, the one that had been at last nights poker game. If he recalled correctly the other man had lost a lot of money too. He was probably here looking for something to steal to make up for his losses.
"Come on, get outta here, foreman'll be lookin' for yah." He said, even giving a playful kick towards the man as he scooted past.
"Corporal Hicks?" came the question from the synthetic.
The name and rank grated on him instantly. It turned his skin cold to gooseflesh. He wasn't in the Corps anymore, why the company still insisted on using his former profession as a title he didn't want to guess. Probably to keep him in line. For him it just brought back bitter memories.
"Sorta," Hicks answered taking the hand that had been offered to him. He still hadn't gotten used to the warmth that came off artificials. They were perfect at fitting in, if he hadn't been told the man was a robot he'd never have wanted to believe it. He'd thought the same about Bishop, despite his strangely nervous personality Bishop had fit in well with the group and had become an integral part of the team when it came to crunch time. He'd forgotten at times that the man was just another cog in the companies machine, following orders and prime directives.
"I am Ethan, I was sent to make sure this reached you personally." He indicated needlessly to the large crate.
"Must be important." He mused, not for the fact that it, whatever it was, had been sent to him but for the personal escort from an expensive piece of equipment.
"Yes, rather." Ethan replied. He wasn't an unhandsome man, but to look at he was rather regular. Plain. His blonde hair was brushed with a left parting. Short and well kept. He had a youthfulness to him which seemed rare in the world of synthetics, all the ones he had met were older giving across a feeling of experience and trust. This model seemed more energetic, alert. It made Dwayne question if what he'd been told was true. He swallowed down the paranoia and took the data sheet board from the synthetic and signed with his thumb print at the bottom.
"What is it?" he asked looking around the bay for a crowbar or something else he could pry the box open with.
"I am not at liberty to answer that, Sir." Ethan replied.
'Yeh, he's a synth all right.' He told himself, it was responses like that a human would never give. "Not part of the primes, huh?" Dwayne answered without thinking, he'd met more than one touchy artificial. They tended not to respond to well when their directives were spoken about.
"It's better you see for yourself, Sir." He answered, the tone of his voice didn't have any chagrin.
"Pass me that bar, would you?" He asked Ethan, pointing behind him.
The synthetic moved to take the metal bar from a work shelf. Tools were scattered about the place, on top of boxes as well as over the floor. The junker had a messy, grungy feel to it. It was difficult to control the dust from scrap haulage, he understood that, but the junker seemed beyond just the normal, natural degradation of an old ship. Before he passed the crowbar to Hicks, he moved towards the bay doors, sealing them closed.
'For my eyes only,' Dwaynetold himself, a cold sweat developed at the back of his neck. The further he got to discovering the package the less he liked it. There was a bitter taste forming in his mouth, dry, bile. He knew it as fear.
Ethan returned and passed him the bar. There was a look of sympathy in his eyes that Dwayne hadn't noticed before. He took the crowbar in his hands and with brute force wedged it in the crack between the lid and the crate proper. It took some groaning from both wood and person before it gave enough to be pried open fully. Even Ethan helped grabbing the lid at the crucial moment. As he lifted it off the crowbar dropped from Dwayne's hand and clattered loudly over the floor. In the large box was a life support machine, within someone was sleeping soundly. Hicks' hand moved to his mouth to try and stop himself from being sick. The taste of bitter fear twisting to that of wanton terror.
Dwayne swallowed a few times, trying to bite back the fear that threatened to overwhelm him. He couldn't pry his eyes away from the sleeping figure. He couldn't make out the extent of the sleeper, just the face; that was enough. Their head was completely hairless, just the ridge of muscle to hint where brows should be. Their face was near featureless, lacking eye and sockets just smooth skin, nose was flattened into twin, snake-like slits. The mouth though, that was what made him feel so queasy. A wide gash which grinned eternally, even in his deep sleep. Sharp pointed teeth at the edges of his unnatural visage only saw fit to remind him of one thing; them. The nightmares.
Hicks reached out and took the lid from Ethan and slammed it back on top of the box, plunging both cryo-tube and sleeper back into darkness. As if having him hidden from sight would make it all go away again.
With an everlasting dryness to his voice he asked. "Who sent this?" His unburnt brow was twitching in irritation. Abject horror twisting into vehement anger. He could feel the torrid emotion boiling underneath his skin, heat rising to his cheeks as he turned on the synthetic. "Who the fuck sent this?" He demanded. Just thinking about the thing made him sick. That had to be it, all part of some sick joke, one of the lads on the junker must have discovered his past and played the prank on him. Haha, the last laugh was on him!
"Which one was it!?" He demanded once more without giving the synthetic a chance to answer the first onslaught of questions. He reached out and grabbed the collar of the pristine shirt Ethan was wearing, he was greeted with a look of confusion.
"This is a joke, right, has to be," Hicks clarified.
"No, Sir. No joke," Ethan answered calmly, trying to free his shirt from the mans grip.
The words sunk in, he'd been sent something so grossly warped that it made mockery of everything that he had experienced. All the horrors, the nightmares, the burned flesh and broken friendships. A half human, half alien, all monster had invaded his life once again. Involuntarily his hand balled tightly and he lashed out, slamming his fist into the metal wall behind the synthetics head. Expression one of pure hatred. Pain rippled through his hand, the skin of his knuckles broken and bleeding for the force he'd applied.
"Get it out of my sight!" He screamed at Ethan as he turned to walk away, his hand still held tightly, the anger worn tensely on his entire being. Whatever the meaning behind the delivery was he wanted no part of it. "Or it'll go out the nearest air lock." He threatened as he opened the bay door back to his life of comfort and denial.