Author's notes: I apologize profusely for the last chapter's bad choice of use of terms and some other bad writing. I was preoccupied with other thoughts since I had several deaths in my family recently, and through the past weeks I've been very busy which left me no time to write.

Chapter 25 has now been updated and I can finally post this next chapter as well. I won't make a promise when I will be finished with another, it all depends how life goes from here.

On with the story…

Paperwork! Most field-agents working for the government or in this case; worldwide companies, loathed this part of the job. They wanted to be where the action was, not sitting down behind a desk filling out reports all day long. Yet it was what agents Bolton and Humphrey of Weyland-Yutani Company's special operations department were doing at this moment. Or rather: the older and experienced Bolton were doing the paperwork – the younger impatient Humphrey sat fidgeting with a broken candy-dispenser he had swiped from someplace. He was working getting inside the thing to get hold of the sweets. Bolton was about to angrily tell his younger partner to get going with his pile of reports when another worker with a pile of documents on his arm rushed into their shared office.

"Hey, Bolt'!" the newcomer said, using a common and shorter nickname for the agent. "We got a hit on one of your missing subjects! Dwayne Hicks has been located!"

"Where?" Bolton asked halting his pen.

"You won't believe it! He's at Sevastopol II in the Zeta Reticuli system. He stole a transport of some kind and went there to apparently attempt to spring a prisoner together with a dude yet to be identified. The two were exposed and arrested!"

"Prisoner?" Humphrey asked looking up from the dispenser. "What prisoner?"

The newcomer looked through the files he carried on his arm. "A woman," he said as he found the correct information. "Somebody named Ellen Ripley." He was not prepared for the alarm that came over the two agents as he said this.

"Ellen Ripley was a Sevastopol?!" Bolton burst out as he threw his pen away. "What was she doing there? And how did he found out about that?"

"Well…" The messenger didn't know where to start. "Ripley is serving aboard a penal ship that was…"

"Yes, yes, yes - we know all about her serving sentence aboard the P.C. Cerberus!" Humphrey said impatiently. "But how did Hicks know she would be there?"

"The chief of security, a Major Winters is attempting to find that out," the messenger explained. "He arrested both the corporal and the unidentified dude and…"

"What unidentified dude?" Bolton cut him off. "He teamed up with someone?"

"Err… we're running his features through a face-recognitional program to get a match, but so far…"

"You got his face? Let me see!" The messenger pulled out a photo from his pile and handed it to the agent. "It's from the surveillance camera in the hangar where they landed. This photo shows the entire crew complement of the craft they came in and…."

"No!" Bolton blubbered out as he looked at the photo. "It's not possible!" The photo showed a wide-shot of the hangar – several people were captured in the moment as they were scanned upon arrival. Aside from the personnel working at the station there were Dwayne Hicks present – but also two other people. Bolton handed the photograph to Humphrey whose reaction almost matched that of his partner.

"What the hell…?!" the younger agent sputtered as he recognized the old man and the child – both who were supposed to be dead. "How can they…? How did they…?"

Bolton was the one who collected himself first. "Set up a communique with Sevastopol right away!" he barked at the messenger. "Use a maximum-boosted signal for a direct transmission! I don't care that we risk using up a lot of power for this, I want to speak to that chief of security now!"

After fifteen minutes, they had Major Winters of Sevastopol II on the screen. "This transmission eats up a lot of juice and risk setting our communications-pylons into an overload, so I'll cut straight to the case!" Bolton informed the man on the screen. "The people who came onboard unannounced – where are they presently?"

"In custody," Major Winters replied. "I had them locked up right after they attempted to…"

"I don't care about the circumstances of their crimes!" Bolton cut him off. "I want to know if they talked to someone! Are they separated?"

"They told some lies to my staff to hide their true identities and they attacked one of my men. But I got them in three separate cells."

"You keep them there!" Bolton ordered. "I want nobody talking to them, and I mean nobody!"

Winters started to protest. "But I need to find out how they managed to compromise our security! I need to find out how they got word to prisoner Ripley and vice versa of this planned breakout! We suspect they murdered a priest…"

"That is secondary!" the agent said firmly. "Your first priority is to keep the prisoners isolated from each other until we can ship them away to some permanent locations in every corner of cosmos! Those two meddling morons and that brat must never come together again!"

"First we need to find her," Winters said under his breath.

"Find who?"

"The kid. She managed to escape capture and is hiding somewhere…"

"But you said you had three occupied cells?!"

"Yes, Dwayne Hicks, the unidentified man and Ellen Ripley."

"Are you telling me that Ellen Ripley is still at Sevastopol?!"

"Yes," Winters confirmed. "The Cerberus left her behind. As I said: I needed to question them how they managed to compromise our security."

A blood-vein was bulging in Bolton's temple and his eyes became darker. "Why are we saddled with such incompetent morons?! Ellen Ripley were never ever to leave Cerberus!"

Major Winters raised an eyebrow on the screen. "Never?"

"She's under a special program… they all are! The captain of the Cerberus is supposed to know that!" Agent Bolton was absolutely furious. He turned to another controller: "Call up that captain's file! Contact him and tell him that he's fired! The second-in-command is to turn around and pick Ripley up immediately!"

"What about their flight-plan schedule?" the controller asked.

"I don't give a damn about their flight-plan schedule! I want Ripley back on that ship this minute!"

"But Sir, you don't turn a ship on a dime! They will need to slow down from FTL-speed and…"

"If you question my orders one more time you will join the Cerberus former captain in unemployment!" Bolton barked. The controller said no more.

"As for you, Major…" the agent now turned back to the screen. "You make sure that those prisoners remain locked up and isolated from all contact until further notice! If they slip out or they contact somebody, you will be held fully responsible!"

Major Winters was about to protest again, but Bolton wasn't going to let him. He only said one more thing. "And find that kid! Over and out!"

The screen in Sevastopol's operations center went blank and left Major Winters standing dumbfounded. "What the heck is all this about?" he said aloud.

Winter's own second-in-command, Commander Cohoe had no better answers to give. "It appears we've been dropped into a real jam with a secret recipe. And we just got forbidden to ask any more about it. What I don't understand is how a little kid is involved in this?"

"You had better organize a search party," Winters grumbled. "Whatever this jam is, that hotshot agent is quite persistent in finding that girl."

"But where are we supposed to look? None of us saw where she went! It's like she just disappeared!"

"A child doesn't just disappear, Cohoe! This is a space station – there's nowhere for her to run!"

"Run, no - but a lot of places where she can hide!" Cohoe pointed out.

"She's probably covering under a bench somewhere." Winters appeared to be unconcerned about a missing child on the station. "She's presently the only kid aboard – how hard can it be to find her?"

"I've already put the monitor-crew on alert-status to look through the video-footage of the securecams," Cohoe said. "She had to have passed at least some of them. It is unfortunate though that the cameras within the ducts are inoperable!"

Winters was looking at his number two with a disdainful look. "You're actually suggesting that she might have gone into the crampy air ducts? Are you kidding?! The moles – the remote maintenance drones barely fit in there and they're no bigger than… well, a mole! The idea to equip the electrical access tunnels with cameras is way beyond me what they were thinking when they designed this station!"

"To spy for rodent infestation," Cohoe shot in – although it was to deaf ears.

"No human can get in there! That's why I never bothered wasting time replacing them when they broke down. Bloody waste of time it would have been!"

Those were words Major Winters was going to be made to eat. The child in question that had evaded capture was right now looking down at them from behind the mesh of a protective grille covering a conduit which was quite small in diameter – yet the child had managed to squirm herself inside with practiced ease. If those men down there have had any knowledge of the child's history they wouldn't have been so quick to dismiss that possibility of her hiding in there. Crawling inside the narrow air ducts was not a new experience to her as she had been doing it for almost half her life. She was after all the Ace of Monster Maze!

After seeing her friends be arrested from the level above, Newt had known that she needed to hide and avoid any kind of detection, just like she had done back on LV-426 when the aliens had overrun the complex of Hadley's Hope. Remaining free was her only chance of helping her friends, even if she right now didn't know how she was going to do that. Luck had been on her side when she discovered an entryway into the ducts under the stairs she had recently descended, and it had been a cover which was not screwed stuck to the wall. Newt had been amazed of the overwhelming feeling like she was reacquainting herself with an old comforting friend when she'd entered the cramped tunnels, immediately being reminded of the game she and the other kids played in similar canals back in her colony. Every child had been playing Monster Maze: a game of hide and seek and sometimes even treasure hunting. Newt had been the best: not only had she had the ability to memorize every path; shortcuts included, but because she was the smallest she could go into places no one else could fit and completely avoid her pursuers. The other kids hadn't appreciated her advantage though: they claimed that she was cheating!

These weren't the air ducts of Hadley's Hope though, they were unexplored grounds – but Newt wasn't worried. As long as she had her sense of direction to rely on, she could easily lay out the passageways in her mind as she went along. These ducts were narrower than what she was used to, but that was no bother either. Newt was not subject to claustrophobia. Quite the contrary, she preferred it cramped as it meant that no one would be able to follow and capture her. That was how she had escaped from the aliens; by going where the monsters couldn't follow! All those experiences from that time served her well now: she expertly squirmed herself through the ducts quickly and yet as quiet as a mouse. It had taken her a while, but she soon found her way over to the second tower of Sevastopol which was reserved for operations and personnel. There she had managed to listen in on the conversation between the commanders of the station and the Company agents on Earth… and learn.

She learned that her adult companions were in three different cells, she learned that the prisoner ship was coming back to pick up Ripley. That would take it a while, but the child was still on limited time – how much time she didn't know. The most important thing she learned was that the securcams; the 'Evil Eyes' as they were called in Monster Maze within these ducts were inoperable, as in 'blind'. That meant that she could move around freely without being discovered! She remembered about two years ago, when she had overheard two technicians of her colony talking about how one of the few cameras within one of the key-junctions of the air duct system had gone out. It was in a junction no kid would pass as the people in operations would then discover them, and the trick was to play in the ducts without being caught by the adults! Newt had decided not to tell anybody else of the 'Evil Eye' that had gone blind, she used that knowledge to completely outmaneuver her pursuers on that day's hide and seek-game. That was the first time they had labeled her as a cheater. Newt had always resented that. She did not cheat – she was just smarter than they were!

Newt pushed those memories aside - it was time to get a move on. The girl retraced her crawl feet first for a while before she reached a crossing where she gained enough room to squirm around to a new direction and she resumed her exploring. The plan she had was a simple one: find her friends and talk to them. The next course of action was up to them to work out. She just hoped that she had enough time, and that she could muster up the courage she needed to face her demons.

So much for my spot-free record.
Ripley still wasn't sure what exactly had happened. It was all so confusing. That inhuman priest had obviously sought her death, but she couldn't understand why. And what kind of entity was he? She had never seen that kind of lifeform before, if it even were a lifeform. A T-1000 a stranger of a man called it, whatever that was. And from out of nowhere Dwayne Hicks suddenly dropped back into her life to obviously save her life, but unfortunately his appearance had resulted in Ripley being in more trouble now than she had been before. The lawyer, if she would ever be able to contact him again would never re-open her case now, not when she was accused of planning a break-out from prison. Ripley was completely innocent to that, but she knew that no one would be interested to listen – the authorities only saw what they wanted to see and they were going to make an example out of her.

And of course, there was Newt. Had it really been her she saw? Ripley didn't dare to believe it – she was almost convinced that it had been a figment of her imagination. How could the child even be here? But then: how could Hicks be here? There was never time to get any of those answers before they were all arrested and locked up in separate cells, leaving her with many questions and a harsher punishment in due. She couldn't see how she could possibly get out of this.

"Psst!" Ripley sat against the wall of her cell on the floor, so deep in thought that she didn't hear the small sound the first time. "Pssst!" The sound was more intense this time finally catching Ripley's attention. She turned her head to find the source of the sound, looked up and saw the cover of steel threads covering an air vent. There was a face behind the fender.

"How do we get into these messes anyway?" a young voice said with a feigned cheerfulness. Ripley immediately scrambled to her feet to rush over to the vent. There was no longer any doubt that her eyes had in fact not betrayed her. "Newt!" she gasped.

"Look, I'm sorry," the child began. She was resting her small fingers against the net. She was for the moment glad that it was there to separate them, otherwise she'd never get the courage to address the adult. "I know what you told me, that you didn't want me to come, but I had to come to warn you. I know that you…" But then the child stopped talking, as Ripley showed her own fingers between the steel mesh and folded her digits over the girl's small hands.

"Oh, baby," The adult whispered. "How I missed you!"

"You… you did?!" The child was very surprised. "But your letter said… that you never wanted to see me again?"

Ripley stiffened. There was a cold feeling creeping down her spine. "Those bastards!" she spat. "They dared to… Oh, sweetheart, that letter wasn't from me! I never wanted to be part from you!"

For a moment Newt felt like she got no air to her lungs – she had to work hard to collect herself. "They wanted to make sure we remined apart…" she said in her tiniest voice. "…to keep us quiet. And not just them! The Terminators want that too!"

"Terminators?" Ripley asked. "What are those?"

"Cyborgs! Robots who look like humans! They want to kill us! You, me, and Hicks! That's why we came here! We knew one was here to get to you! That priest…"

"Definitely not human," Ripley agreed. To anyone this would sound like a too incredible story to believe, but Ripley had seen it with her own eyes and she would never think of Newt making up a story like that. The adult believed the child… all the way.

"We need to get out of here before it comes back," Newt continued. "I'll need to talk to Pops, he might have an idea how to get you out."

"Who is Pops?"

"He's my friend. And… he's a Terminator too, but a friendly one. He saved me from the Terminator who was trying to kill me."

"Good heavens, child, how did this happen to you?" Ripley was visibly shaken.

"There's no time to explain, I don't think I can stay that long. The guards might come here soon to check the securcam. I pulled the cable before I called you." Ripley had not at all taken notice of it, but the miniature video camera monitoring her cell was imbedded in the wall right above the ventilation cover. To make sure no prisoner fiddled with the cameras, the cables plugged to it could only be accessed from within the air conduit – a maintenance worker would have to unscrew the whole grill to get to the camera's operation circuit from behind the wall. Since Newt had squirmed herself to the spot through the back-route, it was easy for her to temporarily disable the device. That meant that no one in Sevastopol's operations center have learned of this conversation taking place.

"You thought about disabling the camera all by yourself?" Ripley was amazed: the child was very intelligent for thinking of such details.

"That was all part of the game," Newt said with a matter-of-factly tone but still looking pleased. "Never let the adults know that you were in there! I was the ace, you know! I still am!"

Just then they heard a small commotion going on outside in the corridor. It sounded like a large party was approaching.

"You better sit down again, Ripley," Newt said. "I have to re-insert the cable and be on my way. But be ready: we won't leave you here! That's a promise!"

Ripley smiled. "The roles have been quite reversed, haven't they?" A year ago on LV-426 it was Ripley who had made a promise to a frightened little girl that she was never going to leave her behind. It was almost hard to believe that this was the same girl. She was still very young, but more matured now. The woman felt an overwhelming pride. Suddenly they heard a clanking sound on the door: it was the sound of pistons being retracted within the framework. Somebody was locking it up. Ripley rushed back to the spot on the floor she had vacated earlier. She threw a quick glance back at the vent, but the girl was no longer visible behind the grille.

The door to cell opened and three guards came in with suspicious looks on their faces. "What have you been up to?" one asked the woman in an unfriendly tone. "Been mischievous, have you?"

"What do you mean?" Ripley asked the guard. "I've been sitting here the whole time, what do you think I could do?"

The guard was about to retort when one of the other newcomers got a call on his radio. He listened to the message. "The camera just came back online? You certain?"

"What else would I be if not certain?" an annoyed voice replied over the radio. "I'm looking right at you on the monitor! Check the cover of the vent!" The guard walked over to the air vent and tugged on the cover. It remained completely fixed to the wall.

"It's secured tightly," the guard stated. He peeked in through the mesh of the fender, but saw nothing. The conduit was empty. "This has not been tampered with at all! It must've been a glitch!"

It was too bad for the guard that he couldn't see behind the T-bend of the conduit as it was there Newt huddled, completely out of sight. She waited for a moment until she was certain that the coast was clear, then she began to crawl again. She made sure to cover some distance from Ripley's cell before she allowed the tears to fall. She had felt the overwhelming need to cry for the last minutes – not of happiness but because she was so incredibly angry.

A lie! That letter had been a lie! A fake message given to her by the Company making her think Ripley had abandoned her! Everything could have been so different after the escape from LV-426; she could've lived with Ripley… she could've been happy! But the Company had denied her that opportunity, they had interfered in her life and put her in a miserable situation together with her grandparents who had not loved her as Ripley did! The company had stolen her new chance of a happy life, just like Carter Burke's actions had lost the girl her parents, her family, her home!

No more! Newt felt a sense of vindictiveness course over her. The Company was going to pay for what they'd done to them! Newt made promise to herself that she was going to destroy them like they had destroyed her, even if it meant that she was going to have to dedicate her whole life to do it! But no matter how long it took, she was going to bring them down!