Chris is walking down the road when he sees it. At first, he thinks it was just the night forest around him playing tricks on his eyes. That is until the feeling of being watched starts to become too much to bare.
"Hello?" He calls out. No reply. He keeps on walking. There it is again, the glimpse of a shadow in the corner of his eye, just inside the treeline. "Is anyone there? Phil, is that you?" Again, no answer. He continues on walking. He feels the air shift suddenly behind him, he turns to see nothing but road. He feels it again and turns, nothing. Starting to get scared since he now knows it's not the forest, he quickens his walk. There's an ear splitting shriek that's definitely not human. By now, everyone knew about xenomorphs, and that if there's one near, you're dead meat. One way or another. But still, one word came to mind; Run
'Why do they always run?' She thinks to herself. She always liked the chase but didn't see the point in them running. Surely they knew they were no match for them, at least, not in small groups and especially not alone. Nonetheless, she gave chase, more like a nice evening jog to her, but to a human, running at top speed. She keeps to the forest before running past him, knocking him over with her tail. She liked to tease them, make them work before she feeds. Or bring them back for her unborn siblings. She had such a large family, always getting bigger. They had to relocate four times already to keep off the humans 'radar', as they said. They had such a strange way of speaking. They did a lot of strange things, which is why she was always interested in them. She nearly misses Chris getting back up and trying to get away as she was so caught up in her thoughts. She was getting bored, and hungry. 'Alright then, let's put this one out of its much-enjoyed misery,' she thinks. She chases him again, this time tackling him and turning his back to the floor. She liked it this way, then they could at least have some look at her before they died. She did have some sympathy for them. How the rest of their family must feel if they found out that their loved one was missing and all they had left was some blood sunk into the dirt. She would be devastated if her brothers and sisters had died. More so, if it was Mother, her queen.
"Please. At least make it quick." Chris said as he faced his impending doom.
'How easily he accepted his fate, like good prey. Not struggling, wasting either of our energy.' She thinks. She nodded, confusing him. He didn't think that they could actually understand us. Sure. he knew that they were smart, he just didn't think that they would bother to learn the language of their favourite prey. Usually, they didn't, but, as was stated earlier, she has an interested in them, she didn't think of them as just prey, they were intelligent, not as much as her kind, but intelligent nonetheless. So, she had decided to learn some of their language. She knew the basics and some sign language, she was surprised when she could that some humans couldn't hear. Sometimes from birth and sometimes from other causes. She was also surprised, more so, when she found out about wars. Why they would ruthlessly fight one another, killing so many of their kind, was beyond her. But, then again, she thought of a colony as one giant hive, not loads of little ones. She was about to end him, her secondary jaw was already speeding towards his face when she heard an almighty scream. Through her link with her hive, she felt her family die, all of them at the same time. The noise was deafening. She reared back and screeched, forgetting about her extremely lucky food underneath her.
'Why had she stopped?' Chris thinks to himself, surprised that he was still alive. Not that it mattered, all his family was dead, killed in another insurrectionist raid on the colony two weeks earlier. The worst part was that it was on his twentieth birthday. They were in his apartment, laughing, having fun. They had just decided to cut his cake. The only reason he was survived was that he was in the bathroom when the ceiling caved in on his entire family. He heard the noise and rushed out, to hold half of his little sisters' body as she bled out. The other half buried deep inside the rubble on the other side of an I-beam. He had tried to do things to take his mind off of it. He had lost his grandmother three years before to cancer they caught too late. Still, nothing could have prepared him for this. He just lay there, watching the Xenomorph on top of him screech in what could only be pain. The only reason he ran in the first place was that he wanted to go out on his own terms, off of the three hundred foot cliff he was heading to. He watched as it scurried back into the forest. Curious as to why he was still alive, he decides to try to follow it. He headed into the forest and kept going. He is deep inside it when he heard a noise, not of the forest. It wasn't human but was close enough that he knew it was crying. He follows it. He was surprised to find that it was the Xenomorph he was following.
'Why is it crying?' He thinks to himself. He remembers a report he read a while ago on xenomorph psychology stating that the only known reason for a Xenomorph to have a sudden emotional outburst is if their hive, or just their queen, had died. He didn't like to think about how they gathered that data. He slowly started to approach her, he didn't know it was a her, but he didn't want to call her 'it'. She didn't notice him until he was quite close. She growls and pounces on him, teeth very close to his face.
'What's the point?' she thought to herself before she got off him and curled into a ball nearby. He approached her again.
"I know what you're going through. If I'm right, you just lost your queen." Chris says. She curls up tighter.
'How could you know how this feels?' she asks, knowing he couldn't hear her. As if answering her question, he says,
"I lost my whole family two weeks ago, on my birthday." He said. It hurt to think about. She had heard of birthdays, a time when some people, not the whole hive, in her mind, would come over to your nest and would celebrate the day you were born. To her kind, it wasn't anything special, but she knew it was very important to humans.
'I guess he has some idea,' She thought to herself. She uncurled from her tight ball and studied him. He clearly had the face of a grieving human. She knew he wasn't just putting it on either as she could smell his pheromones. One of the strongest, being grief. She didn't know many colours in human language but she knew some. She knew brown, his hair colour, and green, his eyes. She slowly approached him, stopping about two feet away. Chris, being the fool he was, put out his hand to pet her. She hissed and backed away slightly.
"It's okay, I have no reason to hurt you. Well, apart from you nearly killing me but I'll let you off," He smiles. Starting to trust him a little more, she edges her long head towards his hand, he starts to bring his hand closer too. After a moment, she pushes her head into Chris' hand, taking him by surprise. After another moment, he started to stroke the top of her head, making her purr. He was quite surprised when she did this but continued anyway. They continued until a 'beep beep' came from chris' wrist, the alarm on his digital watch went off.
"Crap," he muttered, under his breath. He sat there and thought about what to do next. If he stayed out here at night, he'd be locked out, courtesy of the recent curfew and freeze to death, since this planet gets temperatures of under -30 degrees Kelvin at night, the heaters In house could barely keep up until they replaced them a few years they chose to use Kelvin was beyond him but he hadn't bothered converting it to a different temperature. All he needed to know was that it is cold. very cold. But what would happen to the Xeno? Where would she go? Would she survive the cold without her hive? He made his decision. He got up. "Come on." He said, motioning for the Xeno to follow him. Her reply was a tilted head. "I'm gonna take you home."
Unsure, she shrugs, 'I don't know what that is,' she said, again, knowing that he wouldn't hear, nor understand her. Although, He understood her shrug just fine.
"It's what you would call a nest." He said. She was confused, he was inviting her into his nest? In his hive? Surely she would get noticed. "It's fine. I know for a fact that no one will be outside when we get there since the curfew will come into effect soon after that."
'Well, he's smart, at least,' she thought. "But what if it was a trap?' she then thought. Still, she had no choice. She would die of the cold if she stayed out here. And that was the plan she had quickly concocted before her prey showed up, she didn't want to become a queen. She was happy as who she was. But now, she had some hope. Maybe his queen would accept her? She hadn't realised that humans had a completely different way of life. She nodded enthusiastically and when he started walking, she followed.
Well, it turns out that I won't change much. But I decided to go over it anyway. Hope you enjoyed, the other chapters should come along shortly since we have things mostly sorted out. We have to dump a lot of stuff since the spare room and the living room are packed full, but bar that, everything's done! Surprisingly.