When I came out of hypersleep, I honestly wondered if the other Marines had the same exact stupid dream I did.
Come on. I can't jot down my dream right here; that's no way to start a story. Is it? Oh, well, I didn't stick around long enough for Weyland-Yutani to give us grunts a course in creative writing during boot camp, and frankly, I don't care.

Truth be told, though, this is my journal, and I write down whatever I want. Even if it's gibberish. Even if it's a dream about our upcoming mission.
From what we were told about LV-400 before being shipped off, the planet is one big ball of ice, covered in pine forests and mountains, except for the polar regions, which have been referred to as "cold, desert hells" for a reason. So a couple of dumbass explorers got stuck in a blizzard the size of a hurricane. That's our mission: go find them and bring them back, as well as make sure they're OK.

When we left the briefing room, I heard some Weyland-Yutani executive talking to Bishop, the android that recently got attached to our unit. Said something about keeping an eye out for alien life, especially since LV-400 is largely unexplored, and possibly too dangerous to do so.

I don't know. I didn't hear the whole conversation. Anyway, the dream I had was like those dreams where you're trying to get out and you just can't for some reason. I was lugging my smartgun through the snow, and I was slowed down by my gear, my weapon, and, of course, the Goddamn snow. I heard shrieking behind me, and I couldn't tell if it was human or not.

Whatever, right? It was just a dream. Just the pre-mission jitters.

Looking at the rest of the unit, I didn't think Hudson had any odd dreams, judging by how talkative he was at breakfast.

"Guess what we get for this mission, boys?" he chirped, before holding up a pair of blue gloves. "Fuzzy mittens!"

Vasquez, who was sitting next to me, began slow-clapping. "Wow," she said, "as if we didn't know we were going to get suited up for winter."

"And we get fuzzy scarves, too!"

"Sit down and eat, Hudson!" Apone shouted from the other end of the table. "You'll all get your winter gear when we get ready to drop."

"Where the fuck did you get those anyway?" I asked.

"I brought 'em," Hudson replied. "I don't see why you wouldn't bring fuzzy mittens to a cold planet anyways."

"It's called 'common sense,' dumbass."

Hudson, still smiling, turned to his right and craned his neck to see Bishop. "Hey, Bishop! Can you do the knife trick in fuzzy mittens?"

"Not today," Bishop replied without looking at Hudson.

"'Not today?' Come on, man, please?"

Bishop resisted as long as he could, until he got up, went over to Hudson, and looked at the gloves. To this day, I will never understood why Hudson thought fuzzy mittens would make a difference to the knife trick. Maybe it was because these were the kind of gloves that have no grip on anything and have closed fingers, making it likely for Bishop to slip, but the big catch is that his programming does not allow him to hurt humans, so how he would stop himself from stabbing Hudson would be quite interesting.

"You know, you don't have to do this for him," I said.

"Why should I not do this for him?" Bishop asked. "It's not like I'll hurt him." He put the mittens on, took Hudson's knife, and placed the tip of the blade between Hudson's pinky and ring finger.

For those of you who are unfamiliar with the knife trick, it's where you try to stab as fast as you can between somebody's spread-out fingers with their hand flat on a table or something. The first freaking day we got Bishop, Hudson taught him the trick, and we found out that because Bishop's an android, he can do this trick pretty fast, which amuses the crap out of Hudson, I guess. We generally don't get sick of watching it, because we all like to see how fast Bishop can go.

When the fun is over, though, we get right to work.

We were in orbit of LV-400 when we got suited up to drop into the planet's atmosphere. I was still thinking about the dream I had, and although I had repeatedly dismissed dreams as bullcrap before, there was still an uncertainty surrounding it.

"You look like you're actually thinking for once, Drake."

I looked over to see Vasquez picking up her smartgun. There was no way I was going to, in any way, shape, or form, get mushy in front of her, even though everyone in boot camp thought we liked each other. "I'm not thinking," I said.

"Your eyes got glazed over for a minute," she replied. "Come on, it's just me; what were you thinking about?"

"I was thinking about . . ." Oh, what the hell, she'll probably think it's crap, too. "Just a dream I had."

"About what?"

"About where we're going and what we're doing. Never been to a place completely covered in snow before."

"Are you worried?"

"No, of course not. We'll go in, get those explorers out, and then go home. Nothing to be worried about or afraid of." I strapped on my chestplate, continuing to make myself look like I wasn't nervous or scared. Come on, the last thing I want to do is make myself look weak in front of another Marine, even though we've been serving with each other for a long time now.

Well, we didn't have time to start talking about feelings and shit, because we heard Apone shouting that "you sweethearts" needed to get our asses in gear and on the dropship right then and there.

In the dropship, we were strapped in tightly so we didn't smack our skulls against the overhead, and there was no way of seeing out into space and down at the planet we were about to descend upon.

Bishop had informed us that the landing zone was going to be enveloped in a blizzard in a matter of hours, giving us a limited window of opportunity to drop. I still wonder if the emotion coding or whatever it is they're calling it now allows androids to feel anxious, or fear, or something. I know they can detect when humans are scared or anxious, but I don't know if they're capable of feeling it themselves.

Hudson was all cheery and cocky, like always. As soon as we got the weather report, he yelled, "Let it snow, baby!" and decided to yell that again as the dropship began careening through the atmosphere of LV-400.

I've done plenty of drops before. Each time, it feels like your stomach and intestines detach from the muscles holding them in their cavities and fly up into your throat. Hell, I threw up my first drop, got nauseous the second one, and now I just feel everything in my gut is floating. Not a pleasant feeling.

Once we were in the atmosphere, the dropship was manually piloted to the coordinates we were said to land at, as close to the last known location of the explorers. God only knows where they are now, and whether or not they're dead or alive.

No one really expected the snow to be so tightly packed against the ground, so instead of having a relatively soft landing, we bounced a little, and I felt the contents of my stomach move uncomfortably. When the ship stopped, I was certain I was going to be sick, and I wasn't the first to lose my breakfast; as we unstrapped ourselves, Hudson immediately went looking for a bucket or something to toss his cookies in.

There were no lifeforms in the area, aside from us. And the trees, if you count that. We left the dropship with our weapons and equipment, and saw we had arrived in a literal world of ice and snow. The only plant life seemed to be the massive pines and firs standing in front of us, and to the left of the dropship was a vast frozen lake, untouched, like a fresh sheet of paper. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, but Bishop gently reminded us we had a limited time before a blizzard would trap us in the dropship for a few hours, so we began hiking into the forest.

"I got something!" Hudson shouted, looking down at his scanner.

I thought this was it; we found those damn explorers and we can get out of here, but then Bishop rained on our parade: "It's a bird."

We all looked up to see a little white bird perched on a frosted tree branch. It chirped, then flew away. I wasn't sure who I wanted to smack more, Hudson or Bishop.

Aside from birds and mice, it seemed like this planet was untouched by anything that could develop civilization. I don't see how anyone could develop civilization here; the average temperature is two degrees, there are no sources of food, and the ground is probably so frozen that you can't farm here.

The pine forest became more dense as we pressed forward, until we were almost in the dark. The animals here weren't interpreting us as threats at all, and they seemed genuinely interested in us, but so far, we hadn't encountered anything larger than a weasel.

"Hey, do any of you feel like you're being watched?" Hudson asked.

Vasquez looked at me, and I looked at Hudson. "No, why?" I replied.

"I don't know. I just feel like we're being watched."

"What does the heartbeat monitor say?"

"There's something in the tree next to us. It's probably a squirrel."

I stared up into the tree. Sure enough, there was a squirrel, gnawing on some kind of nut that manages to grow here.

"There's two squirrels up there, I guess," Hudson said.

I looked up again, but I didn't see a second squirrel. Way above the squirrel were two glowing red dots, and then the dots began to move. "That's not a squirrel," I hissed.

"What is it?"

"I don't know." I angled my smartgun upward, then saw the dots vanish. "Just a second ago, there were two little red dots. They're gone now." I turned to the others, expecting them to think I was crazy.

"Probably nothing. Maybe an albino squirrel." Hudson shrugged.

"Everything's albino here," Vasquez muttered.

Bishop started, "Technically, albinism-"

"I didn't want an explanation!"

There came a time where we couldn't go on any further because the blizzard was going to be over our area soon, and we had to hurry back to the dropship and hunker down for several hours. I was upset, and I think everyone else was upset, that we didn't find the explorers. On board the dropship, Apone handed out our rations, and we could hear wind start to batter against the hull.

"We've got enough supplies to last two weeks," Apone was saying. "I think we're gonna find two frozen corpses next time we go out there."

"Do you think we could've landed closer to their last known coordinates?" Vasquez asked.

"We landed as close as possible," Bishop replied. "We were at their last known coordinates. There was no way of telling what direction they went in, and it didn't look like they stayed in that area."

"Is there any way of covering more ground?"

"The ship won't be able to take off. The wind's picking up and you can't see an inch in front of your face out there, not mention we might have to dig our way out and dig out the ship."

We sat, eating, and listening to the wind outside. There really wasn't anything to do, so we pretty much went to different parts of the dropship to sit and lounge and try to nap a little.

I still didn't think the red dots were from an animal. Even if there was an albino squirrel or something like that, it was way too far up for a thing that small to be noticed. I know Hudson said he felt like he was being watched, and you generally don't feel like you're being watched by a little woodland animal (unless you're afraid of squirrels).

I managed to fall asleep for a few hours, and when I woke up, I didn't hear the wind anymore. Standing up and leaving my weapon where it was, I went to the cockpit to look outside. The sun was out again, and a layer of fresh snow covered the area. Luckily, we weren't buried, but that didn't mean we didn't have issues. When I saw Bishop, I said, "Are we going back out there?"

"Soon. Right now, we've lost communication with the transport," Bishop replied, "I'm going out to fix the antenna." He opened the hatch, taking a toolbox and folding ladder. "I should be back in two hours or so."

At first, I thought nothing of what he was doing, but that was until more than two hours passed.

"So, we have to wait for Bishop to fix the comms before we can go back out and look for the explorers?" Hudson asked.

"Yeah, I guess," I said. "He said it would only take two hours."

"It's been three." Vasquez held up three fingers.

"So it's taking a while. No problem."

"Jesus Christ, Drake, if you're gonna be that way, you go out and check on Bishop. Something could've happened."

"Fine. I'll go check on him. Still pretty sure that this is just taking a long time." I put on my armor before throwing open the hatch and stepping outside. The weather hadn't changed much; there was little wind, but it was enough to blow the newly fallen snow around. I noticed that small dunes had formed on the frozen lake, which basically looked like a white desert. I started climbing up the ladder, and saw nothing on top of the dropship. The antenna looked fixed, but there was no toolbox and no android.

Alright, this is fucking wonderful. We're on an ice planet, we haven't completed the task, and our freaking android disappears. Wait till Weyland-Yutani hears about this. I don't know how much Bishop cost to make, but he belongs to them and they're going to be really pissed when they find out he's gone AWOL.

There's no way he's gone AWOL. No way. No, there's gotta be some kind of programming in his milk-filled innards that keeps him from running away. Unless he's defective, which is possible. Then again, he mentioned that a lot of the problems with older models were fixed when he was built, but, let's be real, it's still possible he broke somehow, or the cold messed with him.

After searching around the dropship, I stormed back inside, saying, "Bishop's gone."

"What do you mean, 'Bishop's gone?'" Vasquez asked, giving me a dirty look.

"I mean, he's gone. Not on the roof, not in the immediate surrounding area. He's gone."

"Maybe he just wandered off for a walk or something," Hudson suggested.

"Oh, come on, Bishop's an android, not a kid with an attention disorder." Vasquez rolled her eyes. "I don't think he'd wander off. I think we have to come to a bad conclusion and say he was kidnapped by something."

"You really want to jump to that conclusion, Private?" Apone asked.

"Honestly, I don't want to, but there's no way Bishop would just drop whatever he was doing to go for a walk. Something obviously got their hands on him."

Looking at the rest of us and shaking his head, Apone snarled, "Alright, let's get out there and find Bishop. I'll tell you one thing; whoever took him is going to kick a swift kick in the ass."

I personally think Apone said that because he was afraid a Weyland-Yutani executive was going to kick his ass-and all of ours-for losing their property.