It looked so pretty.

Picture perfect.

Like a groom and a blushing bride in a honeymoon suite for the first time, the gruesome death stuff compartmentalized, cleaned up, neatly packaged like how the pork chops from the distribution place no longer look like the bloody mutilated carcasses of cute little animals they had originally been.

I was hungry, in heat, and my twin had just offered me a tempting morsel. Already the man was kissing and pawing on me like the bad boyfriend in some teen movie.

I shakily pushed him away, turning my attention back to the `snack table.'

"Help yourself," my twin said.

I stepped closer to the table, my stomach unpleasantly reminding me of my needs.

The barbecue looked good.

When I reached out to grab it, my dead brother appeared, shaking his head sadly. "Man does not live by bread alone. You of all people should know what that means."

I swallowed hard, thinking about the looting I'd done on LV 426, the stolen food. The unsalted peanuts.

I whimpered, turned my back to the buffet, but another temptation faced me now.

My twin, dead set on getting me to fail, gave me a mischievous smile, bringing the teen heartthrob back to me.

The boy resumed his kissing. I wanted to lay an egg in his chest so bad!

The moment I brought my mouth closer to his, I noticed a figure in a white suit standing beside me.

Alex Cord, with his trademark eyepatch glasses.

"Becky," he said in the gentle tones of a father consoling a daughter after a bad break up. "This is a need too, but you've got to be strong and fight it."

He put a hand on my shoulder plate. "Look, the right time and place will come for...those kinds of things, but it isn't now. Especially not when your friends are in danger. You have to be patient. You can't let this thing take advantage of you."

I nodded. "Thanks."

I knelt in prayer, asking God to remove this evil entity from my presence.

As I did this, I felt the presence of another individual, a strange Ss'sik'chtokiwij, who, up until this point, had only been watching my little exchange from afar.

Why is it bad to kill humans? It asked me in my mind.

I used to be one, I sent back. Your kind killed my family...but I forgive you.

Why do you forgive me?

I was about to respond, but she saw my next thought.

You know mother!

I used to think the best about Ernie. Just because her family killed a bunch of people didn't mean she herself was wicked and evil.

I trusted her. Considered her a friend.

At Hadley's hope, I used to hang out with a kid named Sarah. At the time, the scientists at the place didn't know that Ss'sik'chtokiwij were dangerous, so they let us visit Ernie in her cell, play games like Monopoly with her.

Okay, so the researchers weren't super dumb, they saw the aliens as dangerous as, say, a bobcat or a grizzly bear, but Sarah was a clone, and in between lying about how dad said it was okay, and dad ascribing to the "That'll learn you" school of parenting, I got away with playing with deadly chest bursting E.T.

One day Ernie's kin got loose, killed people in the lab. We escaped them, with our alien friend's help, fleeing to Sarah's apartment.

The place was pretty basic. Just a couple beds and some storage compartments, Sarah's drawings and a poster of kitty cats on the walls. We locked the door, huddled in the corner, nervously waiting for the next alien to come popping out to kill us.

"Do you have a plan for getting out of here?" the alien asked.

We didn't.

"Once daddy is here, we can explain the situation," said Sarah. "Maybe he can get someone to send in the army or something."

Ernie nodded. "Sounds good. Though I think it will take them a long time to cross space."

She looked more worried now. "He'll figure something out, I'm sure."

The alien pointed to the door to the shower room. "What's in there?"

On the base, we had a water conservation system, which meant communal showers, kind of like the ones they have in gyms and prisons.

"You bathe in there," I said. "With the people in the other apartments."

"So anyone can get in there?"

I gave her a nervous nod.

"That's...not good."

Still, Sarah wanted her dad, so we hid there.

The alien was sitting closer to us than she'd normally been allowed, so she got a good look at Sarah's neck, found a bar code tattooed on the girl's skin. "Honey, you've got something on your neck."

"What, like a bug?"

"No. A tattoo. SB49045329. What's that about?"

She paled. "I don't want to talk about it."

"Honey, why don't you want to talk about it?"

"I got it in the dark place."

I stared at her in bewilderment. "Dark place?"

A tear rolled down her cheek. "Please. Don't make me talk about it."

I would find out about that dark place soon enough.

I was bold back then. I actually positioned myself close enough to Ernie to whisper into the ear side of her head.

My dad had some story about Sarah being stuck in a slave colony. It explained the tattoos, so I actually believed him. "Daddy says a lot of painful things happened to her while she was in there, so her mind makes her forget. That's what the dark place is."

"Thanks for telling me," Ernie whispered back.

I'd later find out she's a clone.

By the way, the alien had received some brain damage from a fight with her sisters, giving her a talking problem like Tourette's. I've left her little `tics' out of this narrative, but she kept doing it every time she talked, mostly things from the bible and "chair." I knew a guy in the chemistry department who had the same problem.

The alien bared her teeth. "Does this look like I'm smiling?"

I frowned. "No."

Sigh. "Still, you made made me feel better."

Then she noticed how sad and frightened Sarah was. "Are you okay?"

Sarah didn't answer.

Ernie patted her on the back. "It's okay, Sarah. No matter what happened to you, I'm here for you."

Sarah hugged her, but then frowned. "You're not very soft. I feel like I'm hugging a giant cockroach...No offense."

The alien looked sad, her head and shoulders drooping. "I'm sorry. That's just how God made me."

Sarah gave the hugging thing another try. "Can you even feel that?"

Ernie put a chitinous arm around her. "Yes."

We stared at the door.

"Sarah, how does your father know to meet us here?"

My friend pointed to her phone, charging in an electrical outlet. We had phones on the base, but we mainly used them like walkie-talkies.

Sarah liked to make the alien read The Hobbit. She said that Ernie sounded like Gollum, and coached her on cute ways to read the prose sections, you know, to make it seem like it was Gollum telling the story.

The door clicked open halfway into this dramatic performance. We all shrank back in fright, but it was only Sarah's dad.

Medium height, bearded Irish looking face, gray jumpsuit. Wrinkles around the mouth, crows' feet at the eyes.

"Daddy!" Sarah cried, running to him.

I was really glad to see him too. Ernie was good company, but she wasn't human. "Mr. Hansen!"

He hugged both of us. In some ways, I kinda thought of the guy as a dad. We both were crying and trying to explain everything that happened at the same time.

"Hi, Mr. Hansen!" Ernie padded forward, wagging her tail. "I'm so happy you're here!"

When the man looked up at the alien, fixing her with an icy glare. "What the hell is that thing doing outside!"

He pushed me and Sarah away from her like the alien had rabies.

Ernie wagged her tail anxiously, watching with unease as Mr. Hansen took out a gun to shoot her.

"No, daddy," Sarah cried, but her father ignored it.

The man loaded rounds into the gun. "I tolerated you in the lab because you were under lock and key. I let you play with my daughter because you were under supervision, and Kurt only needed to push a button to overload those probes whenever you got out of line."

He aimed the weapon at the alien's head. "I suggest, if you can understand what I'm saying, and if you have any sense at all, you'd high tail it back to the lab before I add a few extra holes in that banana you call a head."

"I can't," Ernie protested. "The others of my kind will kill me."

"Tough."

Sarah's dad chambered a round, pulling back the hammer.

Swallowing, Ernie backed toward the door to the shower room.

"Daddy, don't," said Sarah.

"Honey," the man said. "Ernie isn't well, and he needs to go back to his cage. If he does what I say, no one will get hurt."

With a heavy sigh, the alien opened the door to the shower room, stepping out.

I felt so bad for Ernie. She meant well, and Mr. Hansen was just being cruel to her for no good reason.

And why did you want to shoot someone that saved children's lives?

She was a friend. I cared about her.

I know it sounds weird coming from someone who used to live in fear of xenomorphs, but I actually ran to her, throwing my arms around her exoskeleton. "Don't go!"

"Rebecca!" Mr. Hansen cried. "Get out of the way!"

I swallowed hard. The mean old man was going to murder one of my coolest friends, someone, at the time, I genuinely cared about, and for what? Leaving her cage? "No," I told him. "You'll have to kill me first."

The alien sneezed.

Mr. Hansen scowled, disarmed his gun. "Dammit."

"Why?" Ernie asked me. "Why stick up for me like this?"

"You're my friend." I told her.

She coughed.

Up until this point, I thought she'd just been reacting to the dust or something. I didn't know how aliens expressed themselves. "Are you allergic to something?"

"No. I'm...happy. "

My twin, seeing what I was trying to do, grabbed me by the throat, squeezing my neck until I could hear my shell cracking.

I saw stars and everything got all swimmy.

She didn't talk or growl or make any sound. That frightened me more than if she had actually threatened me.

Despite the silence, I understood the message, loud and clear.

This body belonged to the shadow, and I wasn't supposed to be messing with her turf.

The strange Ss'sik'chtokiwij that had been watching me, seeing me in peril, leapt from the shadows, claws spreading for attack.

My twin raised one of her hands, and my would-be rescuer somehow became magically suspended above the floor, unable to move.

I said a prayer for deliverance, and for resistance against the temptations I faced.

A bright glow erupted from my claw, the same claw that I had used to pick up the golden rock.

I raised two claws in a benedicting gesture.

The moment those claws touched my enemy's body, I experienced an effect like turning the electromagnet of one of those machines that drop cars into a crusher against another magnetic crane of the same polarity. She went flying through the room.

I resisted the urge to shout `Expellariamus', for fear of losing whatever power that had been bestowed upon me.

My enemy picked herself up off the floor, shrieking so loudly that all the windows shattered, and the vacuum of space sucked the air out of the room.

She transformed into a black cloud, appearing to disperse into the vortex, but when I inhaled, the gas entered my mouth, filled my lungs. The whole world went dark.

My eyes focused again, and I found dad choking me.

We were still in the gymnasium. He had me pressed up against a pillar.

Dad threw me into a wall, breaking the sheetrock.