Gorman emerged from a hole in a that blocked the corridor, a hastily-welded wall of pipes, steel-plate, outer-door panels and machinery. Acid-holes have been slashed through the floor and walls in several places. The metal was scratched and twisted by hideously powerful forces, peeled back like a soup can on one side. The rest of group emerged after him. At this point in time, Kendall and Hicks' hands were no longer intertwined, but his hand rested on her back, as they walked through the corridor.
"Sir?"
Drake came up the corridor to meet them.
"They sealed off this wing at both ends. Welded the doors and blocked off the stairs with heavy equipment."
"Uh huh."
Gorman nodded.
Kendall and Hicks came through the barrier, his hand moved from her back, and his hand now rested on her shoulder. Kendall, was wide eyed and tense. The group slowly moved up the corridor.
"But, it looks like the barricade didn't hold."
Drake continued.
"Any bodies?"
Gorman asked.
"No, sir."
Drake answered.
Just then, Frost came up the corridor.
"Last stand. Must have been a helluva' fight."
"Yeah. Looks that way."
Hicks nodded, in compliance to what Frost had said.
"Alright. Drake...this way. We should be able to cut through the Med-Lab to Operations."
The soldiers' pack-lights played over the devastation of the colonists' last ditch battle, as they entered the Med-Lab. The equipment of the Med-Labs had been uprooted to add to the barrier. But, a lot of it was still in place and intact. The blue lighting in the rooms caused lots of unwanted shadows. Burke touched Gorman's shoulder, and he pointed him to something across the room. The others followed. Kendall and Ripley seemed to transfixed on something. The others approached them, as they saw what the two Ripley's saw.
Ripley and Kendall had stopped at the door of a second room, part of the Med-Labs area. In a storage alcove, at near eye-level, stand six transparent cylinders were filled with liquid, each lit from beneath. Stasis tubes. They seem to contain large severed arthritic hands, the palsied fingers curled in a death-rictus.
At the sight, Kendall covered her mouth with her hands, and she felt her breath hitch in her throat. They had experimented on these things. She felt someone's hand on her back, and she almost jumped out of her skin, before she felt the hand move from her back to her shoulder, and whoever it was, rubbed her shoulder, almost comfortingly. As if they knew how she felt at that moment.
"Lieutenant Gorman!"
Gorman came over. Hicks and Gorman moved past Ripley, and Kendall, into the room. Burke and Bishop followed closely.
"Are these the same ones?"
Burke asked Ripley, and Kendall, to which they both nodded to, both of them unable to speak.
So, what they had thought was true. The colonists had found the ship, and God knew how many of them had been infected. Burke walked over, and he leaned close to one of the cylinders, in fascination, his face almost touching it.
"Careful, Burke!"
Ripley warned him, and he glanced back over at her, before back at the FaceHugger.
The creature inside lunged suddenly, slamming against the glass. Burke, jumped back. So did everyone else. From the "palm" of the thing's body, emerged a pearlescent tubule, which slithered tongue-like over the inside of the glass.
"Looks like love at first sight to me."
Hicks said, as Kenny turned her head to see Gorman and Bishop looking at the other FaceHuggers in the tube.
"Oh, he likes you, Burke."
Meanwhile, Bishop picked up a file-folder from between two of the dead speciman tanks.
"Two are alive, the rest are dead."
Bishop read, as he flicked through the file-folder's pages.
Inside, was a medical chart printout with hand-written entries.
"Surgically removed before embryo implantation. Subject: Marachuk, John J. Died during the procedure."
Bishop read, before he looked up at the others in the room.
"They killed him taking it off."
They were all startled by a loud beeping. Hick's motion tracker, which was being held by Frost, came to life. Something was moving in its scanning range. Beep. Beep.
"Yo, Hicks! I think we got something here."
Frost said, as they all came up, to look closely at the tracker.
"Behind us."
"One of us?"
Ripley asked.
"Apone...where are your people? Anybody in D-Block?"
Gorman asked into his headset.
"That's a negative. We're all in Operations."
Apone's voice was loud, and they could all hear what he had said through Gorman's headset.
Immediatly, everyone tensed up. Drake moved up ahead of the group, and Frost fell in next to him, and they all started to slowly head toward the source of the signal. Drake kept his smart-gun aimed ahead at all times.
"Talk to me, Frosty."
Drake called over his shoulder.
"Just keep moving baby."
As the soldiers rounded an array of complicated equipment, Gorman accidentally knocked over a metal canister, which sent it down onto the ground with a clang. Ripley, and Kendall jumped like cats. They both looked at Gorman and moved on.
"It's moving."
"Which way?"
"It's coming straight for us. Straight up."
The team moved into an adjoining corridor. Hicks' tracker beeped rapidly. Kendall glanced at the tracker's screen which showed the object as it moved closer. It counted down the feet till contact. Something moved in the dark, and it jumped across the corridor. Drake, pivoted smoothly to fire, at the same time Hicks' rifle slammed Drake's barrel upward. A stream of tracer fire ripped into the ceiling.
"You fuck!"
Drake exclaimed, but Hicks saw what Drake didn't see.
"Hold up! Ripley."
He motioned Ripley forward. Trusting his judgment, she came up beside him. They all crouched down by a row of steel cabinets and Hicks aimed his light under them. Lit by Hicks' pack-light...there was two cowering figures. A very dirty, very terrified Newt Jorden, and a taller equally dirty, and equally terrified Masey Meyer. Newt gripped the head of a large doll, as she held it by the hair. Just the head.
"Oh my God."
Was all Kendall could say.
These two girls. Out of 159 colonists, 2 had managed to survive this.
"Hey, shhhhh. It's alright. Come on."
Hicks began to reach under the cabinets to grab one of them. Newt and Masey inched away each time he came too close.
"Just grab one of them, Corporal."
Kendall glared at Gorman.
"You can't just grab them. They're obviously terrified. He shouldn't grab them immediately. Ease."
She said, and with the look that she had received from Gorman, she sent him a cold stare.
"You wanted my help, and I'm giving it."
"Don't be afraid. Come on. We won't hurt you. Shhhh, it's alright. It's okay. Come on out. Come on. Easy. Easy."
Ripley cooed, as she tried to soothe the two to come out hiding.
Newt and Masey finally got themselves jammed in a corner and Hicks was able to grab Newt's wrist.
"I got one of them!"
Newt bit him on the hand and both the girls bolted like shots, as they scuttled along beneath the floor grilling. Hicks yanked his hand back in pain.
"Owwwwww! Damn!"
"Watch them!"
"Don't let them go!"
"They're under the grill!"
"Frost, use your lantern. Frost, get your light up here!"
"Right here!"
"Where'd they go?!"
"They're on the other side of us!"
"Shine your light!"
"Down here! Here, here!"
"Here, here!"
"There they are!"
"Keep back! Keep back! Don't scare them!"
'Grab them, man! We're going to loose them!"
Many different people interjected throughout the whole confusion, it was hard to keep tabs on who said what. Newt and Masey reached an air duct set in the baseboard and scrambled inside.
"Damn it!"
Ripley grabbed Bishop's light and dove, squirmed into the duct without thinking.
"They can't get out!"
While they waited for Ripley to come back, Kendall swabbed a small piece of cloth with rubbing alcohol, and she gently cleaned the bite that Hicks had received from the small girl. Seeing him wince on occasion when the alcohol touched his wound, a small smile graced her lips, she found that a bit amusing. She half-expected a Marine to be as tough as nails, and yet here she was, with one, who winced when alcohol touched his open wound.
"So...You are capable of smiling."
She glanced up at Hicks, and she rolled her eyes.
"And you are capable of being a smart ass..."
She retorted without hesitation, and she heard a small chuckle elict from Hicks.
"Fair enough."
The two of them sat in silence, and on occasion, she would glance up to see him staring at her, intently.
"You could swear that you had never seen a girl before..."
She remarked, as she tightly tied a cloth bandage around his wound.
Sure, it was small, but they had no idea what had happened to this girl, so...it was a precaution.
"It's different to see a new face around here..."
"After you're stuck with the same grunts for a while, right?"
She said, before she glanced down at his bandaged hand.
"You acted like such a girl, you know. It's just a little bit of alcohol..."
She murmured, teasingly, and the corners of her lips tugged up into an even bigger smile, as she watched him roll his eyes.
"When I have to clean up a wound of yours, and I have to use rubbing alcohol, I'd like to see you not wince."
"There's a difference. I'm a girl. I can act like one."
She teased.
"It does sting you know."
"What do you want me to do? Kiss it better?"
She jibed.
Normally, Hicks would not let a girl poke fun at him this much, but then again, Rae was different.
"It wouldn't hurt..."
He remarked, a hint of a teasing tone in his voice.
Rolling her eyes, Kendall took his hand, and she gingerly kissed the side of it.
"Better?"
"You know I was joking right?"
"Sure you were. Sure you were."
She teased, as she pulled him up.
Meanwhile, in the ventilation room, Newt and Masey entered the room and quickly turned to lock the ducts grille door. But, Ripley pushed the grille open before they could latch it, and crawled in after them.
"Wait! Wait!" Ripley called, as soon as she was all the way through.
Newt and Masey were backed into a cul-del-sac in the tiny steel chamber. Ripley shone her light around in amazement. It was a nest. A nest built by a child. Wadded up blankets and pillows lined the space, mixed up with a haphazard array of toys, stuffed animals, dolls, cheap jewelry, comic books, empty food packets, and even a batter-operated tape player. She looked up at the rotating fan drum above the room while she silently moved forward.
"It's okay. It's alright. Don't be afraid." Ripley said, as she tried to calm the frightened child. In the process, she picked up one of the cheap jewelry pearl necklaces and she held it up in front of Newt and Masey as she moved forward.
"See."
Neither girl was buying and they were trying desperately to back further away, but the wall behind was stopping them. Nowhere to run. Nowhere, except another air duct right beside them. Without hesitation, they both dove for the hatch.
"Wait! No you don't!"
Ripley grabbed the youngest, as she controlled the girl in a bear hug. The child struggled wildly, like a cat at the vet's. Masey froze, as she closed the hatch to the air duct. She wasn't leaving Newt. They didn't know each other before infestation, but they were all they had now. Something told her that she could trust this woman, but she backed away into a corner, away from her.
"It's okay! Everything is going to be alright now! Shhhhhh! Easy, easy...it's going to be okay. It's alright, your going to be okay. Shhhh, shhhh, shhhh,...easy...easy."
Newt went limp, almost catatonic.
Ripley looked over to her side and noticed something amidst the debris...a framed photograph of Newt, dressed up and smiling. In embossed white letters underneath, it said: SECOND GRADE CITIZENSHIP AWARD REBECCA JORDEN.
Looking back down at Newt in her arms, Ripley stroked the girl's hair in a motherly fashion, keeping the child calm. Something that she used to do with Kendall and Amanda when they had nightmares. Newt was lost in her mind, as she stared at nothing. Ripley glanced over at the other cowering girl. She looked about Kendall's age. Keeping an arm around Newt, she pulled the other girl into a tight embrace, rubbing her back, gently. Both girls shivering in obvious fear.
New OC. Maybe she might fall for a different Marine? Maybe Hudson? Wink-wink. Nudge-nudge. Leave comments. Masey looks like Adelaide Kane from Reign, and Teen Wolf.