Knock, knock, knock.

"Come in." I said.

A tall, blonde woman in her early thirties appeared at the door. She was wearing a lab coat and a serious expression. "Miss Watkins, I'm Dr. Parker. May I please have a moment of your time?" She spoke in a lovely English accent, but her melodic voice was filled with unease. I invited her inside hastily, looking down the corridor to see if anyone had noticed her. It wouldn't be good to get caught outside during a lockdown, especially with everything else going on. "Please sit down. Would you like some coffee or tea?" I had walked halfway to the kitchenette when she replied, "Actually, the reason I'm here is because I was able to identify body you found. His name was Henry Fuller, he was a colleague of mine from the ecology department."

"I'm very sorry for your loss." I said earnestly, taking a seat across from her.

"I appreciate your sentiment," She said professionally. "I came because I found something strange when I performed the autopsy." She was holding a tablet in her hands and she started typing in commands to pull up Dr. Fuller's patient file.

"What was it?" I asked, leaning forward to have a look.

"The results of the autopsy suggest that Dr. Fuller was attacked. There were defensive wounds found on the body." She showed me her autopsy notes which described in detail Dr. Fuller's injuries.

"I don't understand. Who would attack him?" I asked, confused.

"I don't think one of us did it." She said, firmly.

If he wasn't attacked by one of the colonists, then who could've done it? Surely, no animal or wildlife could've been responsible. The company had assured us that this planet possessed no indigenous life and I highly doubted anything could survive out here. "How do you know he wasn't attacked by another member of the colony and left to die?" I suggested. She made a few clicks on the tablet again and showed me a graph. "Dr. Fuller sustained multiple burns to his face and body, which were the ultimate cause of death. When I examined and took samples from his injuries, they contained traces of a highly potent and corrosive acid." I stared at the graph, which showed the names of different elements and a percentage next to them.

"Okay, but how does any of this prove your theory?" I asked, still not convinced. "Initially, I thought that someone had attacked him with hydrochloric acid and left him to die, but when I took a closer look at the components, I realized that the substance is mostly unidentifiable. Only a tiny percentage of it was made up of chemicals that we know of." She turned the tablet towards me and I scrolled through the results. It seemed that there were other components that the computer could not identify. "So, then, what exactly are you saying doctor?" I asked.

"There is no record of any acid of this potency being brought to the colony. I searched in the digital inventory for any chemicals that could have been combined to make the substance, but I came up with no answers. There is also one more thing…" She hesitated, debating with herself if she should tell me. "The results of the tests also showed that the unknown substance was organic matter." My eyes widened in disbelief, "That has to be an error!" She shook her head, "No, I ran the test five times and used different samples each time. It's unlikely that the results are erroneous."

"Wait a minute, why are you even telling me this? I don't even have half the clearance needed to know any of this stuff. Why not go straight to Ledger or the company?" I stood up and started pacing anxiously around the room, turning my back to her. "I have reasons for not trusting Ledger. He is lying to people who trust him. I don't fully trust the company either." She whispered. "Besides, you're involved in this first-hand, you're a witness. You don't need clearance to be given answers," she added.

"Are you sure you didn't see anything else out there? Anything suspicious or something you couldn't explain?" She asked.

"You mean apart from a guy who got his face melted off by mysterious acid? No, I didn't notice anything suspicious at all," I said sarcastically.

"Alright, look, we can't let anybody else know about this. I'm going to tell Ledger the results were inconclusive and I'll wait until the company representatives get here. In the meantime, I need you to keep quiet about this." She walked up behind me and put her hand on my shoulder.

I turned to face her, "If you can't trust your superiors or the company who hired you, then why are you here at all?" I demanded.

She crossed her arms over her chest defensively, "I came to work here because I wanted to be part of something great. I wanted to help build a better future for humanity."

I looked away, unable to meet her eyes. "I'll shut up about this, if you promise me that we'll keep looking for answers. I can't turn a blind eye if there's something or someone out there that poses a risk to the colonists."

Dr. Parker nodded and shook my hand. "Deal. I'll be in my office if you need anything. Here's my calling card."


"Residents of Hadley's Hope, this is Norman Ledger, your administrator, speaking. I'm afraid I have terrible news to share with you this evening," Dr. Ledger's voice was coming through the P.A. system. About damn time. "The lockdown we have experienced over the past several hours was not a drill," he cleared his throat before continuing, "It is my unfortunate duty to inform you that a member of our prospering colony is deceased. His name was Dr. Henry Fuller and he was a prominent researcher in the ecology department. Due to the unforeseen and unexplained circumstances in which he died, we cannot be certain of what caused his death. Rest assured that an investigation is underway and Weyland-Yutani Corporation has promised to send a special team to get to the bottom of this. Your safety is our number one priority now, which is why nobody can leave the colony until we can be sure it's safe. Until then, you may feel free to carry on with your work indoors. If you worked closely with Dr. Fuller or have any information regarding his death, please see Abigail Parker. Thank you."


Hours Later

I woke up later that night feeling unusually queasy. I rushed to the bathroom and barely made it to the toilet before I was barfing everywhere. It felt like my stomach itself wanted to come out of my body. I leaned against the wall for a minute, catching my breath, before I moved to the sink to rinse out my mouth. As I cleaned my face, I looked in the mirror and realized how pale I looked. Gosh, am I getting sick? I stumbled back into my bed and tried doing some breathing exercises. For some reason, this always helped me when I had an unsettled stomach.

Ring-aring-aring, ring-ring!

The noise from my view-screen startled me half to death in the quietness of the room. "Fuck!" I said aloud. I moved to my nightstand and activated the monitor. Who the hell is calling me at this time? I turned on the camera, not bothering to hide my disheveled appearance. On the other side, Dr. Parker looked even worse. She had dark circles under her eyes and looked equally pale. She definitely hadn't been sleeping.

"What do you want?" I asked, annoyed.

"Victoria! God, you look terrible." She exclaimed.

I rolled my eyes, "You don't look so hot yourself, doc. Why are you calling me at this time?"

She bit her lip, "Listen, I spoke to one of the doctors after Ledger made his announcement and he had something very interesting to say. You need to come right now to my office. I'm in room 4061. Hurry!" She logged off before I could get a word in, leaving me to wonder what the big deal was. For a minute, I contemplated just staying in bed, but decided it was better to go. Otherwise, she'd keep calling me all night. I pulled myself out of bed and stumbled toward my dresser, stepping into a pair of too-tight jeans. Have I seriously gained weight? I've barely been eating. I shrugged into a lose sweatshirt as well and got going. Her office wasn't too far from my quarters. Only a couple of hallways and a flight of stairs to pass through and her office was a floor above mine. I got there quickly and started knocking on the door, which flew open before my knuckles even touched the smooth metallic surface. "Come in, come in! Hurry!" She ushered me inside. "This better be worth me missing sleep. What the hell is going on?" She gestured to the opposite side of the office, where a nervous-looking man was sitting and shaking his leg.

"That man sitting over there is Dr. Patel. He worked closely with Dr. Fuller in the ecology department. After Ledger's announcement earlier, he spoke with me and had quite the confession." Dr. Parker pulled me toward him and said, "Ok, Amav, tell her exactly what you told me and do not leave out any details. Victoria, here, is the one who found Dr. Fuller and she deserves to know the truth."

The man looked at me with tears in his eyes. I was starting to worry as I sat down across from him and he spoke, "Hi, before I begin I just want to say that I'm so sorry. I think if I had just done things differently…" His voice trailed off as he began to sob. He spoke with a thick Indian accent that might've sounded beautiful if it hadn't been littered with guilt.

"It's okay," I said, gently. I leaned forward and offered him a box of tissues from Parker's desk.

"Henry and I were going to the mountain range to check the PH levels of the soil and we brought some equipment with us. We were kneeling in the dirt, and saw a cave in the distance. Henry got curious and decided to go look into it, since it wasn't on any maps we were given. I stayed near the mountain range with the equipment and collected some of the soil and rocks. I had been communicating with him through the earpiece in our helmets and I told him I was almost finished. He told me the cave went deep underground and that it was full of passageways. He'd gotten lost. He said to take the equipment and samples back to the lab, so I put everything back in the truck as fast as I could. When I was inside, I turned on the radio and tuned in to our frequency. I reached someone and explained to them what was going on, but I received no reply. I started driving toward the colony minutes later and saw another vehicle approaching the site. I assumed they were coming to help him and I went back to the lab that day." He was shaking his head and sobbing again.

"You must've seen my dad and I on our way over there. We don't remember seeing any other vehicles, though. In fact, we were under the impression that we were the first ones to go out there." I crossed my arms over my chest and looked at him seriously.

Dr. Parker finally spoke, "This information does not leave this room. I have many theories as to what could've happened to him, but all of them can hold the company accountable. Whether it was murder or an accident, Weyland Yutani will be at fault." She paced back and forth around the office for a moment. "If the vehicle he saw was not the one you and your father were in, then it must've been another person from the colony, correct?" She paused to look at us.

We nodded in unison.

"Then that means at least one other person was at the site before his body was discovered. Perhaps he was injured in the cave after an unknown acid dissolved his helmet and he tried to save himself, sustaining further injuries in the process. Or maybe, someone went inside to look for him and hurt him for an unknown reason with an unknown substance that cannot be traced back to a source…" She shook her head gently. "None of it makes sense. We still can't be sure of what happened to him." She plopped down next to me looking tired and defeated.

"Well, I propose we go back out there and find that cave." I said, somewhat jokingly.

"We'll have to sneak out and break the lockdown rules, but I don't see what else we can do." They both looked at me like I had gone insane, but Dr. Parker's face softened and she thought for a moment, "Perhaps you're onto something."

"I am not going back out there. No way!" said Dr. Patel. He ran his fingers through his hair in exasperation and shook his head.

"Whoever or whatever killed Fuller has the potential to kill us all and I suspect the company knows something. I will go myself if I have to," Dr. Parker glanced in my direction and raised an eyebrow.

"I'll go with you. It's not like I have better things to do, anyway."

I shrugged and leaned back in my chair. I knew I was being completely reckless and irresponsible, but my gut told me that the cave held the answers we needed. I had played it safe my entire life and if making a dangerous choice could help uncover what truth, I was going to make it.