Chapter 11:
The Facehugger's Search for a Host
The eight-legged parasite was crawling out of a hole in the ground after waiting patiently for a small group of wolves to leave. It hadn't attached itself to any of their faces simply because this was not the standard facehugger that was not picky about its host for the embryo that it implanted. This was the "royal" facehugger that not only implanted one drone embryo in one host but also a queen embryo for the done to protect as the drone would be born sooner than the queen would.
This facehugger, being the rather rare "royal" breed that it was, needed to find the perfect host to implant the queen embryo with it. Unlike the standard facehuggers, which carried a drone embryo that was much more resistant to diseases, this royal facehugger couldn't choose its host randomly because neither of the embryos it carried were as resistant to disease as those carried by standard facehuggers were. Therefore, it had to choose a host that wasn't sick in anyway. Conditions such as blindness and deafness would have little to no effect on the implanted embryos, but actual illness, on the other hand, could severely weaken or even kill the implanted embryos immediately. During the embryo and chestburster stages, the aliens were susceptible to even the weakest of ailments such as the common cold. This royal facehugger wasn't stupid even though it was nothing more than an animal of sorts. It was smart enough to detect even the minutest amounts of even weakest of ailments, which could still prove to be fatal for the immature aliens as the deadliest ailment would be for an adult human.
However, the adult aliens were entirely immune to any known contagion and were anything but afraid to take any risk that would otherwise cause any other living creature to fall ill and even die. But there wouldn't be any adult queen alien if this royal facehugger didn't find two disease-free hosts to implant first with the queen embryo and later the drone embryo that would serve as the immature queen's protector as long as it was just a chestburster. The two embryos inside of this parasite were dormant eggs within the royal facehugger's eggs sack, which contained all of the sustenance that both of embryos within it for as long as the royal facehugger wasn't killed. But as it had forced its proboscis down the throat of both of its hosts and safely implanted the embryos in said hosts' lungs, the royal facehugger would go off to die as the drone and queen embryos began growing inside their hosts' chests. And, if the conditions within those hosts' bodies were perfect for the embryos to develop quickly, the drone would be ready to be borne by bursting out of its hosts' chest only two or three hours after the facehugger detached from the face of its second host. And that would have matured enough to protect the queen when it burst out of the first host an hour after the drone was born.
The facehugger was not afraid to crawl across the ground out in the open where anything and everything in Jasper could see it. The greatest difference between the standard and royal facehugger, aside from the webbed membrane that connected to each of its eight legs, was that the royal facehugger had three defensive mechanisms rather than only one that happened after death or injury occurred. The first was shared between both breeds of facehugger—acid blood. But the almost bulletproof shell made it rare for when royal facehuggers needed to use that acidic blood for anything. And in the very unlikely chance that the queen embryo was in born before the drone and in danger before the implantation of the drone was even started, the royal facehugger could also uses its deadly barbed tail to shred the flesh of even the largest and most determined attackers if they got too close to the immature queen. It could also use that same tail to defend itself from wolves and other curious predators while traveling out in the open like it was now, which was the whole reason for it not being afraid to do so in the first place.
So, in short, any royal facehugger was as brave and daring as the aliens they helped produce were. An adult alien would take on a pissed off mama grizzly bear and come out victorious with very little effort. Royal facehuggers could be just as brutal of fights when it came to the survival of themselves or any embryos it had just implanted within a host. Especially if that embryo was that of a queen—the aliens in Jasper had no queen yet and this royal facehugger was determined to provide them with the leader that their already constructed hive needed.
The royal facehugger only had one chance to successfully implant both of the embryos it carried within two different hosts. If it failed, then there would be no queen to lead the live—ever. The "deacon" alien that had laid the first set of facehugger eggs had only laid one royal facehugger egg before its natural death, which only occurred after producing its first batch of eggs. Unlike a regular alien queen, the now dead deacon had been born with the ability to lay eggs, but the difference was this—it died once laying all of those eggs, which always included at least one royal facehugger. And it was now the responsibility of that one royal facehugger, one of many of the deacon's offspring (of which it resembled the trilobite that birthed the deacon when it implanted an embryo within an Engineer—an alien species that resembled humans and was responsible for human life on earth) to produce that new queen that would mass produce more of the facehugger eggs that would help greatly increase the population of the species.
The facehugger was nearing a mountain when it picked up the scent but not of one but two perfectly healthy wolves (not that it knew they were wolves of course) within a den built into the side of that mountain. They were both making noises from the den in this moment, sounding as if they were really enjoying what they were doing—which was each other.
"Oh, Nars!" the female moaned.
But this facehugger intended to ruin their fun as soon as it got the chance to.
Author's note: I tried to make this chapter seem as if it's from the facehugger's POV while not having it be in first person. I think I did that pretty well by showing all of it's thoughts and such (if something like a facehugger can even think that is, haha).