Chapter 7

Steelshine stretched out on her side, arching her back and then contracted her body into a 'C', rubbing her head against the floor like an enormous feline. She twisted so she looked at the world upside down. Her hands stretched upwards to the ceiling. She imagined that she could crawl over them again, like when she was small. Too big now. Even climbing walls was sure to be difficult. She flopped back down and cast her mind out, bored.

"HELLO SIGURD! WHAT ARE YOU DOING RIGHT NOW? DO YOU HAVE TIME TO SEE ME?"

Uh, not right now, but I should be able to pretty soon. I have to talk to you, though. "

WHY? WHAT IS IT?"

Well… The Director knows that I visit you a lot and thinks that I've tamed you.

"CAN I SHOW HIM JUST HOW TAME I AM?" Steelshine sent Sigurd an image of her claws flexing in front of her grinning jaws.

She purred. He was amused.

The Queen's eyes crinkled up in happiness.

Maybe later. He wants to see what happens if another person goes in the room with you.

"I DON'T LIKE THE OTHERS."

I know, I know… I was wondering what you think should happen; if you want to tolerate them or not.

"I THINK NOT. I DO NOT WANT THIS DIRECTOR TO GET IDEAS. I WANT THEM TO LEAVE ME ALONE. I ONLY LIKE YOU. YOU ARE NICE FOR PREY."

Sigurd sighed, slightly annoyed. Please don't call me 'prey'… It makes me uncomfortable.

"BUT WE ALWAYS CALL YOUR KIND PREY… YOU ARE TWO-LEGGED PREY AND THERE IS FOUR-LEGGED PREY AND FLYING PREY…"

How about you call me 'human'. Then I don't feel like you might get peckish and snack on me later.

"OH, FINE. FOR YOU, SIGURD. YOU ARE NICE FOR A HUMAN. THE REST ARE STILL PREY THOUGH. I WILL EAT THEM IF THEY COME IN HERE."

Don't eat them; just let them know they aren't welcome in here.

Steelshine flapped her tail in annoyance. She didn't really understand why Sigurd wouldn't let her eat one of the Prey. Sigurd didn't like many of the others either. They were tasty and had hurt her and her children; therefore they deserved to be punished. Confusing.

…..

Sigurd lifted his cap and rubbed his sleeve across his forehead. He was sweating.

Was Steelshine even going to listen to him? He didn't even know who Robert was going to send in… Shit, was Robert going to go in himself?

Naw, that wasn't like him; he liked making his lackeys do anything hard or dangerous.

"Ready, Sigurd?" asked the Director, slouching over, hands shoved in his pockets.

"Um… I guess. Who are you sending?" "Just a minute. They should be here soon." "Who are you sending?" Sigurd asked again, a note of alarm in his voice.

Robert raised his brows. "Be patient."

Steelshine, don't you dare eat whoever the idiot is that Robert is sending in…

"WHAT COULD YOU POSSIBLY DO TO STOP ME?" she commented casually. "I WON'T EAT ANYONE UNLESS THEY TRY TO TOUCH ME FIRST. I AM A QUEEN. NO ONE TOUCHES ME WITHOUT MY PERMISSION."

"Hello, Sigurd." said a smooth, female voice.

He turned.

"Uh, hello? I don't think we've met before…"

A tall, doll pretty woman stood before him. She reached out and took his hand, shaking it.

"I am Yvonne. I am Robert's personal assistant."

"He has an assistant?"

"Yes. I normally do not leave my office or roam the areas around the laboratories."

Robert caught Sigurd staring open-mouthed at the woman. "She's a synthetic."

"YOUR MOUTH IS HANGING OPEN, SIGURD." Steelshine commented with a mental snicker.

"Oh, uh, nice meeting you, Yvonne."

"I will be going into the Queen's chamber with you. I will be documenting every moment of our interaction."

"Robert!" Sigurd hissed. "What if she gets damaged?"

"Relax. I have spare parts for her and I backed up her memory and personality. I'm not stupid."

"Are you ready, Sigurd?" asked Yvonne, pulling on a lab coat over her navy-blue suit.

"Yeah… I guess…" He opened the door.

Steelshine was lounging on the floor as usual, though alert and taut.

"SIGURD! WHAT IS SHE? SHE IS NOT PREY! SHE CRACKLES WITH ELECTRICITY! HER BONES ARE METAL!"

She's a synthetic, a fake human.

The Queen's eyes were very wide.

Yvonne stood silently, hands folded in front of her.

Steelshine got up and paced a circle around her, pausing to sniff and stretch out her sensitive hands, clicking her jaws and twitching her tail.

Finally she sat, taken quite aback by this bizarre object.

"IS SHE ALIVE?"

"No. Synthetics are very advanced computers. But she does think, in a way.

"I CAN'T HEAR HER THOUGHTS."

She doesn't have them like us. She has no real mind.

"She is quite an amazing specimen." commented Yvonne, taking a few steps closer to the Xeno and examining her on her own.

Too late, Sigurd saw her hand reach out…

Steelshine let out an indignant squawk and her tail came swinging out at a speed close to mach three.

It just grazed his head, knocking off his hat and ruffling his hair, but it caught the synthetic right in the chest.

She yelled as she soared across the room, hitting the opposite wall with a sickening crunch. She started sliding towards the floor, but Steelshine grabbed her and slammed her against the wall again! A spray of milky fluid coloured the wall. The Xenomorph sank her fangs into Yvonne's shoulder, ripping out a cluster of liquid covered electronics with a snarl.

Amazingly, Yvonne was still functional, barely.

"S-s-systems fa-failing… As-s-s-ssistance…ce…ce… Required. Chk… Chk… Chk… Ssssss…"

Sigurd stared, jaw hanging open, again. He had never seen brutality like that.

Steelshine glared at the bubbling, sparking simulacrum and flattened her head under one strong hand.

"PITIFUL." she spat.

…..

"Look, I'm sorry about your synthetic, Robert! I told you it was a bad idea!"

"Shut up, you bastard! Do you know how much she cost? Oh, Yvonne…"

Sigurd stood, feeling awkward at the weeping wreck before him.

"I don't know why she reacted that way! Maybe the synthetic's electronics scared her-"

The Director glared, his bloodshot eyes seeming to burn. "Do not call her 'the synthetic'! She has… Had a name!"

"Just… I… Oh, Christ… Robert, just stop, okay? You said you have her backed up, so just buy another frame and download all the data. That's why you sent Yvonne, remember? So that if anything happened, no one would die. Just pull yourself together, man." Sigurd had seen this sort of thing before. Wealthy men or women would get too attached to a synthetic, treating it like a human, eschewing normal human contact in favour of their perfect, robotic partners.

"How the fuck do you do it? Why does the fucking Alien not kill you?"

"I don't know. She just doesn't."

"Fuck you. Get the hell out of my office."

…..

"THAT WENT WELL." commented Steelshine. She appeared to be learning sarcasm.

Why did you do that? Robert is inconsolable right now!

"THAT THING TOUCHED ME. I SAID WHAT WOULD HAPPEN IF SHE DID. DO YOU KNOW HOW BAD THE FAKE PREY'S BLOOD TASTED? MY ROOM STILL STINKS OF IT."

Sigurd ignored her tangent. You don't see me ripping people to pieces when they bother me! I want to keep you alive and healthy and that will be very difficult indeed if you keep trying to slaughter everyone else!

"YOU LACK THE EQUIPMENT TO RIP OTHERS TO PIECES, THOUGH IF YOU PUSHED BACK A LITTLE, PERHAPS YOU WOULD BE RESPECTED MORE."

Why didn't you kill me when I first touched you? Or when I entered you room? Sigurd demanded. Why am I special? His face felt hot with anger. He was glad no one else was in his room with him.

"I WAS TOO WEAK TO ATTACK YOU WHEN YOU FIRST ENTERED THE ROOM OR I WOULD HAVE EATEN YOU." Steelshine admitted. "BUT, LATER… I WAS GLAD FOR THE COMPANY. I WAS SO LONELY AND ANY COMPANY, EVEN IF THEY COULD NOT SPEAK TO ME WAS WELCOME. I WAS OUT OF MY MIND WITH IT, HALF-MAD." A tinge of fear crept into her mental voice. "I NEVER WANT TO BE THAT LONELY AGAIN. I DON'T WANT TO GO MAD. AND THEN…"

Glorious color flooded his mind, like a sunset when it was in that special place on the horizon, above the trees but below the clouds, golden and perfect… but in shades he could never hope to name.

"YOU COULD SPEAK TO ME. YOU WERE NOT SOME DISTANT, ENIGMATIC PREY, LOWLY AND EMPTY. I KNOW, FROM YOU, HOW MOST OTHER PREY THINK OF US AND YOU DON'T. IT IS WONDERFUL…" Steelshine trailed off, a little embarrassed, a little worried. Sigurd didn't know what to say but that didn't matter. Steelshine knew exactly what he didn't know how to express.

…..

Two days later, Robert still had not emerged from his office, clearly still in mourning. Sigurd and the rest of the facility went on with business as usual, though the attack was almost all the staff could talk about. Sigurd had heard enough and was dying for some new item of gossip to crop up and occupy them.

The evenings when everyone else had retired to their apartments or to the common rooms was a precious, private time where he could spend time with Steelshine.

She had become rather obsessed with Sigurd's books. She couldn't read them, of course, but she liked to eavesdrop in his mind when he was reading. She was fascinated with the idea that whole worlds could be contained in a little bit of cardboard and paper, just a fragile scrap ready to be torn or soaked into ruination.

Steelshine had also taken to telling Sigurd tales about her Hive and family. The oldest, of her grandmothers Ebony and X-13, had achieved a near-mythological feeling to them, filled with grandeur.

Unfortunately, while Sigurd would have loved to keep hearing about her most ancient ancestors, their tales were few and far between. Steelfang had not managed to teach them all to her daughter before she died and now they were lost forever.

…..

Steelshine, what is it like to be a Xenomorph? he asked one day, peering over at the tranquil Queen.

"WHAT DO YOU MEAN?"

Well, you have so many more senses than us humans and you've said before that we seem to be wrapped in a cocoon that muffles everything.

"I CAN SHOW YOU, IF YOU LIKE."

How?

"I CAN RIDE IN YOUR MIND AND I SHOULD BE ABLE TO PUT YOUR MIND IN MINE, SO…" She gave a mental shrug.

What do I do?

"JUST RELAX AND TRY NOT TO THINK OF ANYTHING. I DON'T WANT TO BE DISTRACTED."

He struggled to do so. Suddenly, a wave of dizziness rolled over him, impossibly powerful.

That was replaced by his nerves screaming.

Sigurd didn't even know how to describe what he was feeling, let alone decode it! His nerves buzzed like a faulty fluorescent tube and felt more rubbed raw as each second passed.

There were undulating waves of pressure rolling over him, heavy one moment, gone the next.

Concentrations of heat were spotted everywhere, like standing by an unseen oven.

The air he breathed was packed with scent, overpowering with a perfumy reek and underlaid with sweat and food and musk…

"ARE YOU OKAY?" asked a feminine voice, sounding right next to him.

Sigurd couldn't answer. Dizziness rushed over him again and then he was back to his regular strength senses and it was so good… So simple.

"ARE YOU OKAY?" asked Steelshine again.

"Fstgl." he uttered, shaking his head.

Ugh… He pressed the heels of his palms into his eye sockets and rubbed hard. How do you keep from going insane?

"HOW DO YOU NEVER GET LOST?" countered the Xeno.

Too much to handle… I don't know what half of what I was feeling was.

"AND THIS IS JUST A QUIET ROOM. IMAGINE WHAT A BUSY HIVE WOULD BE LIKE."

No thanks. I don't want to imagine anything like it ever again.

"YOU WOULD GET USED TO IT EVENTUALLY, I IMAGINE."

No, Steelshine.

She huffed a breath of warm air at him, ruffling his hair.

Sigurd scootched closer and leaned against her chest, stroking her forearm absently. She thrummed placidly.

You don't deserve this. Sigurd thought suddenly. You should be in your own Hive, free and safe. You need to get out. Hell, I need to get out! I can't do this anymore… I see the Drones, wounded in fights with each other or from experiments and I can't pretend they are animals anymore. They didn't have anyone to keep them from going mad.

Steelshine was silent, soft purr halted. A feeling of regret trickled into his mind and made a lump rise in his throat.