As Lex stared in horror at the swarm of red crosshairs clustered on Scar's chest like glowing gunshot wounds. He must have caught sight of them at the same moment because he looked down and then up in alarm, too late!
In that instant there was a whine in the air and a clutch of fat, black darts embedded themselves in his arms and chest with a rapid smacksmacksmack! He released his victim, flinging Fil violently aside and roaring in fury. He tore a handful of them from his flesh, just as another phalanx of darts whistled out of the fog and hit him in chest and throat. Desperately he scanned the woods trying to see where the attack was coming from but without the mask nothing was visible except for dripping trees and drifting vapour. He couldn't even use the shoulder plasma cannon's targeting system without his mask.
He put his hand up to pull the gun from its shoulder mounting but whatever was in those darts must have been strong and fast-acting because he couldn't co-ordinate his movements. He turned, took a few steps towards her and fell to his knees, she could see he was trying to talk but couldn't. She didn't need to hear him to know what he was trying to say: "Run!"
As if suddenly released from an evil spell she wheeled and fled, still clutching Selim, back through the whispering silver grass to the Chameleon, finding her way by memory to where the cloaked ship was.
As she ran, a dark shape reared up out of the mist to her left. Holding Selim hard against her she lashed out and kicked him in the groin. He collapsed onto the wet grass and she sprinted on towards the ship.
Just as she reached the spot where she knew the gangway to be she saw another shadow loom up on her right, saw the flickering red light, heard the "ker-chack!" of a dart launcher reloading.
Before they could fire a loudhailer split the air in the clearing
"Alexa! Stop!"
That voice! Lex knew that voice; she'd heard it often enough for it to be imprinted on her brain forever. She skidded to a halt, not quite sure what caused the muscles in her legs to freeze so suddenly.
The voice came again "Stand down, all of you! We can't risk harming the child!"
Lex turned, panting, tears running down her otherwise stoney face, to see men in dark combat fatigues emerging from the undergrowth, keeping Scar covered with their guns. The hunter now lay unconscious but still breathing in the grass.
Fil had scrambled to his feet and was standing uncertainly a few feet away.
All this she saw but her main attention was on the tall woman who had stepped out of the shadow of the trees. Unlike their last meeting she had exchanged her usual suit for a bullet proof vest and dark fatigues, but Lex knew it was her all the same.
"Professor Iversson?!" She said, hardly able to believe her eyes or her ears.
Iversson lowered the loudhailer, not needing it to be heard in the silence "Good morning Alexa. Are you going to put a stop to this violence now?"
"How can you be here?" Lex edged back warily, this was the woman who had conspired to keep her a prisoner all those months.
Iversson walked forward. If she was at all afraid after their last meeting – when Lex had broken her arm, threatened her with a knife at her throat and taken her hostage – she didn't show it. She crossed the clearing with hands spread wide as if Lex was her long lost daughter. "We can discuss that later," She said calmly "I know you've been looking for me Alexa. Is this your child?"
"This is my son. Selim."
"Ah – your son." Iversson's eyes lit up and she craned over, trying to get a closer look, her voice faltering with emotion "He is incredible."
When she saw his eyes rolling back in his head her own eyes went wide with alarm "What's wrong with him?"
Lex swallowed, but why lie? After all this was what they had come here for "We think it's a tumour, pressing on his brain. He has seizures, pains in his head. It needs to be removed. Soon. He doesn't have long."
Iversson nodded as if this was exactly what she had been expecting.
"I can help him Lex, if you let me." She said "But you have to cooperate. I promise that if you do I will try my best to save him, but you have to give yourself up now without any further bloodshed."
"How do I know I can trust you? That you'll save him and not just dissect him?"
Iversson met her gaze earnestly "There's not much I can say to prove it to you, all I can do is tell you the truth: I will do all I can to preserve your son's life."
Lex felt Selim's whimpering breaths against her shoulder, then looked past Iversson to where Scar lay, out cold. If she surrendered now, all three of them would be prisoners. Who knew what Weyland Corps real purpose was, why they wanted her? She would be placing their lives at the mercy of a huge faceless, corporate machine.
On the other hand, what other option was there? Scar was already captured. Without him she didn't know if she would be able to pull off a kidnapping, especially as Iversson had obviously been alerted to their intentions.
She had left her own plasma cannon on the Chameleon. She might be able to make it back on board without being darted herself but even if she did, Selim needed help. If he didn't get it he would die a slow, agonising death.
She looked into Iversson's serious blue gaze and decided to gamble.
"I see I have no choice but to trust you." She said steadily "Just know this: I swear to God if you don't keep your promise, you will regret it."
Iversson nodded and put a hand on her arm to guide her down the hill towards the waiting men. Beyond the Professor, she caught sight of Fil watching. He turned away, unable to meet her eye. She ignored him, he was still alive – apart from that he didn't matter now. Nothing mattered but her son.
She willed herself to stand still as the hired muscle came to take Selim from her and strap him onto a stretcher and attach him to a drip. He whimpered a little but seemed too out of it to really notice what was going on. She was handcuffed but at least she was allowed to stay with him as they were herded onto a helicopter transport.
She didn't see where they took Scar.
She rested her cuffed hands on Selim's bed and held his frigid little fingers in her own.
"I'm sorry sweetheart." She thought, numb and cold as the morning chill "Sorry I got us into this, but I couldn't think what else to do to save you baby. I just hope Iversson does what she promises… or I'll kill them all."
Scar drifted in a dark, weird place fathoms deeper than sleep. He struggled but something held him fast under the oily surface. He heard a voice speaking that he didn't recognise. Then Lex emerged through the murk of the dream, as she did in most of his dreams… those he could remember anyway. She materialised naked in front of him as inky clouds swirled around them like smoke underwater. Her eyes were half closed as if in a trance, watching him from between dark lashes.
She gave him a little half smile that made him shiver, drifting closer and wrapping her arms around his neck.
"I thought you were never going to forgive me." He said, surprised.
"I do not forgive you." She replied.
Suddenly she drew back and opened her eyes wide. They were black, not just her own dark irises and pupils but fully and utterly black, like obsidian; like the eyes of the deity with whom he always conflated her in his mind: the bitch goddess, the soul eater.
He stared at her.
"Want to prove to everyone who the Alpha male in my life is?" She said and then brought his arm up to her mouth and bit him hard on the inside of the elbow, sinking her incisors into the vein there. Enraged, he seized her by the hair and jerked her head back, ripping her teeth out of his arm and pulling her face up close to his. She smiled, green blood trickling from the corners of her mouth. With a long shuddering breath that was pure lust, she backhanded him across the jaw. She was stronger than usual, supernaturally strong. As he was smashed backwards, she followed and suddenly she was all over him. He had not been able to resist her as a human, he had no chance now that she was a goddess.
She ran her hands over him greedily and her limbs were winding around his so tightly that it was actually painful, but he always liked it better when it was painful.
As she stared into his face, her soft human lips trembled with suppressed laughter and then parted to reveal teeth that were getting sharper and longer by the second.
"Marking your territory, is that it S'Kia?" She sighed in a voice that was not her own but as if a chorus of a thousand female voices were all speaking to him at once "You jealousss… lying… contrrrrolling …."
As she spoke her face and body started to morph in front of his eyes. Her smooth skin became hard and chitinous. Her face changed so that her eyes receded horrifyingly into her skull that stretched and contorted. She was growing, lengthening and changing shape, until she was bigger than him, huge and monstrous. She held him fast in her giant steel claws and her razor toothed jaws gaped open. From within slid the mucus covered inner mouth "This is what you want, is it not?" She said, her voice making his head hum.
"No! What nonsense is this?" He was desperately struggling to free himself from her now "What are you talking about?"
Her eyeless head snaked closer to him but instead of using the inner jaws to strike at him she began to force them down his throat.
He tried to fight her off but he was choking as the horrible tube pushed its way down his oesophagus, suffocating him. "This is what you truly desire, you and all your kind." She crooned, as the awful darkness smothered him her words echoed inside his skull "Death."
Lex watched dully as mile after mile of ocean rolled away underneath them, featureless, flat and lead-coloured.
They'd been taken by helicopter to a landing strip and then transferred to a private plane. Through it all she'd been like a sleepwalker, almost as if she had no will of her own now she'd surrendered. She could do nothing now except look after Selim. She sat next to him, alert for any little signs that he was in distress. She allowed herself to be cuffed to the side of the bed, hardly noticing the way the metal bit into her wrist but chafing at the way it made it awkward for her to hold his hands.
Through it all Iversson sat opposite flanked by two black-clad soldiers ("But they can't be soldiers," Lex thought "She doesn't work for the government anymore, so they must be mercenaries. It's all private money now…") Sometimes the Professor watched her, sometimes she watched Selim. Lex looked at her out of the corner of her eye "Maybe it's my imagination," She thought "But it's like she's yearning to touch him…. to be near him… I guess he would've been her life's work if I hadn't escaped. Maybe she's hoping he still will be. I just wish I knew that I could trust her to save him…"
She suddenly raised her head and looked Iversson directly in the face "Where are you taking us?" She asked "Wherever it is, it's taking too long! I told you Selim needs urgent medical help. When are you going to start giving it to him?"
She noticed the two mercenaries on either side of Iversson suddenly looked a little more alert ("They don't look like they'd be that much of a challenge," She thought, watching them assesingly "I'll bet I could take at least one of them out before they could stop me, even cuffed to the bed.")
The Professor only winced a little "Keep calm Alexa, it won't be long." She said hoarsely "We have to get to our facility and then I promise Selim will get the help he needs – we're just thirty minutes away."
"You really don't need to keep me cuffed Professor, after all where would I go?" She said with a grim little smile "Why don't you get your toy soldiers to take the bracelets off? I just want to look after my son and I need you a lot more than you need me right now."
Iversson met her gaze "I'm not going to do that Alexa, I think we both know why."
Lex sighed and held Selim's hand up, pressed her lips against it – his flesh had been chilled earlier now he was warm and sweaty. They'd given him something to bring his temperature down but he still felt feverish.
Sea fret rose up to meet them and now, through the wall of grey mist she suddenly saw a landing beacon blazing red like a burning torch. A shape began to appear looming out of the murk – a huge manmade structure sitting on the surface of the water. At first she thought it was an aircraft carrier but then she realised it was too massive. As the curtain of wet gloom parted she could see the outline of a vast complex laid out in the rough shape of a barbell; two islands linked by a covered passageway.
For the first time since she'd been captured Lex registered a flicker of interest "What is this place?" She asked Iversson.
"This is Weyland Corporations research complex," The Professor seemed gratified by her interest "It's quite something isn't it? Most of my team virtually live out here for half the year."
"It's like a city, but I didn't know Weyland Corp had branched out into marine sciences," Lex frowned "Why out here – don't you have facilities in the States?"
"We do but our more … sensitive work takes place here," Iversson "We're in international waters now."
Lex looked up at her "So you've brought me to another place where I have no rights. A legal no-mans-land this time hmm, Professor?" She shook her head "I see your basic MO hasn't changed."
"Alexa," Iversson sighed in a pained manner "Do you think we'd be able to do what we need to for your son on the mainland without interference? We need somewhere that secrecy will be assured. Out here we can control things, keep Selim away from prying eyes."
"So you built all of this just in case I came back?" Lex looked at her sceptically "That seems like an awful lot of trouble to go to just on the offchance."
"I don't like to leave anything to chance Alexa," Iversson said carefully "Nor does my current employer. You'll meet them induce course, and then you'll understand."
Lex subsided, there was no point in resistance now. Or rather there was no point in resistance yet, but all the while the plane was descending through the murk her brain was working overtime.
"So far so cryptic," She thought "I've made my choice and now I've got to play this gambit through, at least until they've done what they can for Selim, but what the hell do they want from me? It sounds like Weyland Corps have been after my missing-presumed-dead ass for six long years. They must have some very pressing business with me to go to all this trouble."
She sighed "What does it matter? As long as they save my baby's life! I just hope I haven't delivered us all into their hands for nothing."
"And Scar," Finally she turned her thoughts towards him, still angry "When you said you'd do whatever was necessary to save Selim's life did that include handing yourself over to be kept prisoner by a bunch of soft meat? Not what you had in mind, I'll bet."
Despite the stormy conditions they touched down smoothly on the rain-lashed landing strip. As the plane came to a stop she heard a tortured metallic groan and then a grinding, whirring noise. The light from the planes small windows, already pretty dim under the lowering clouds, was all but blacked out as huge dome shaped shell closed over the plane. When finally it shut with a deafening boom, fluorescent strip lighting blinked on all around the metal hangar.
They uncuffed her from the gurney and she allowed herself to be led down and across the puddled deck by the two plastic soldiers, sticking close to Selim's side. Through the miasma of gut-twisting anxiety she couldn't help but notice that this place was a pretty impressive creation. She'd been expecting cramped metal rooms akin to something on board the Piper Maru but once they got below decks the facilities they were ushered into were spacious and state of the art, at least on these upper levels – the place had looked like it stretched down for a good long way from what she'd been able to judge. Of course some of it had to be underwater so it was hard to tell just how deep down it went.
They rounded a corner into a room very minimally done, just a bed in the room. No chairs, no nightstand – a cell. Just like her cell in Nevada. As she turned to protest, one of the plastic guards took her arm and jabbed a needle into the vein there. He'd depressed the plunger before she even realised what he was doing.
"You're fucking double-crossing me already Iversson?" She screamed, trying to push past the guards as two others came to take her son off down the corridor without her. Already she could feel her knees starting to go, her vision blurring.
"It's just better if you take a rest for a couple of days Alexa," Iversson said almost pityingly "There are tests we need to run on him, things we need to do. We have the best doctors and surgeons money can buy here, just let them do their job. I promise I'll wake you when it's over. "
"When it's over?! No! No! I need to be with him." She said desperately, willing herself to stay awake "He's my baby!"
"You don't need to worry Alexa," The Professor's voice sounded almost disembodied "I'll look after him as if he were my own."
She felt herself going under and in the last coherent moments she heard a strange, terrible voice on the edge of consciousness, just an animalistic hiss "He's not yours, he's mine!"
Just as she blacked out, she realised it was her own voice speaking.
