Lex sat by Selim's bed. She was feeling a bit more together now having finally managed to get some sleep, have a shower. They'd also given her some clean clothes, black cotton trousers and a plain black t-shirt. At least she now felt a little less like a zombie.

They were playing a board game that one of the staff had left in the room to keep him occupied. She was surprised and pleased that her son actually seemed to be recovering a lot faster than Professor Iversson had predicted. He was already a long way towards being back to his usual boisterous self. In fact, despite being instructed to sit down and take it easy she was finding it difficult to keep him calm. He was fidgeting around so much she had suggested playing the game but even though such things were a novelty to him, he was still restless. Every time he managed to leapfrog one of his pieces over one of hers she had to almost restrain him physically from jumping up and doing a victory dance.

He also kept asking her about his father "Where is he? Does he know I've been ill? Why isn't he here?" A few times every hour he would ask the same plaintive questions.

She didn't know what to tell him, but every time he asked she felt a part of her shrivel up to see his misery. She put him off with vague answers but the truth was she couldn't tell him because she didn't know. According to Iversson, he was a prisoner here but more than that the Professor refused to say. At first Lex had been so eaten up with worry for their child and so busy trying to look after him that it had driven everything else from her mind. Now Selim seemed to be out of danger she couldn't stop thinking about Scar. What were they doing to him?

Having time and distance from the terrible night they had been captured, she now saw that he had almost certainly been right about Fil "With the shuttle's stealth techs there's no way Weyland Corp could have found us unless… unless he was wearing some sort of tracking device that they could follow."

The more she thought about it, the more she was convinced it was the only explanation that made sense. It wasn't that she now wished Fil dead, but if he had betrayed her so completely it threw a different light on Scar's actions "I can't blame him, not when I know he was just trying to protect Selim. Even if sometimes we disagree on the method, I trust him with our son's life… or mine. I'd trust him over any human alive."

If Selim's medical treatment hadn't been dependant on her co-operation she would already be trying to break out so she could look for him.

At night, when the boy had gone to sleep she was kept awake by thoughts of him being tortured, or dissected. "I wouldn't put anything past Weyland," She thought "She told me about Isaac in a way calculated to cause me the maximum amount of pain and I could tell she enjoyed it. And she was so obviously trying to stir up my hatred against Iversson, the spiteful snake!" She gave no credit to the woman's claims to have gotten over her desire for retribution.

Since their initial meeting she had visited and spoken to Lex several times, always turning the conversation around to try and probe her. Lex could tell that her main interest was in the yautja technology – the cloaking devices in particular – though Weyland was too clever to ask her directly.

She could guess why; it didn't take an entrepreneurial genius to imagine just how valuable such a thing would be to her company. Several times she had tried to find out what Scar might have told her about the devices. On this as on all other subjects related to him Lex would stonewall "I don't know how it all works." She said flatly "How would I? He dealt with all that stuff himself and he didn't ever discuss it with me. He barely spoke to me."

So the CEO would smoothly move onto something else showing no hint of disappointment. Even though she always remained outwardly cordial, Lex could sense an undercurrent of malice lying behind her polished smile.

She ignored Selim as if he were a piece of furniture.

In the meantime Lex racked her brains for a way to find out where Scar was without violating her agreement with Iversson. Selim was still on painkillers and he needed monitoring; though the Professor had said that, all being well, his stitches could come out tomorrow.

She suddenly realised that she hadn't been concentrating on the game and only now saw that she had been utterly defeated. "I am victorious and you lose, I have beaten you Mother!" Selim gave her a beaming smile, all razor sharp canines.

"You sure did." She smiled "I guess I'm going to have to practise harder if I want to win against you!" She was about to suggest another round when the door opened and she saw Iversson. Isaac was with her and she had her hands on his shoulders, restraining him from rushing into the room. It was the first time she'd seen him since their initial meeting and the shock of his existence hit her all over again. For a moment she was irritated with the Professor for bringing him here without asking first.

Then something strange happened. Selim saw Isaac. She expected him to be as shocked and surprised as she was but instead, he slid off the bed and ran over before she could stop him. When he got there he seemed confused about what to do next. He danced excitedly from foot to foot, his grin the absolute mirror image of the other boys, waiting for her to come over.

Lex was both puzzled and amused to see that both children were watching the adults as if they had done something naughty and were waiting to see if they were going to be discovered.

"Selim," She said finally "Why don't you go and show Isaac the game we've been playing? And no rough stuff, remember you're still meant to be taking it easy."

"Isaac," The Professor said sharply "That applies to you too, remember you have to be gentle."

As the two children rushed off gleefully, she turned to Iversson "Did that seem a little strange to you?"

The Professor looked thoughtful "I admit I was expecting more natural caution on both sides." She said, as they watched the two boys sitting on the bed whispering conspiratorially to one another, seemingly as thick as thieves already. Seeing them together, Lex couldn't help smiling. It was nice to see these lonely little kids getting along. Selim certainly needed to spend more time with other children and she doubted Isaac got to socialise much either.

"Do you think it's some kind of…I don't know…" Lex shook her head "…genetic sympathy?"

Iversson tapped a foot on the floor sceptically "I doubt it."

"Then what?"

For a moment the older woman seemed like she might be about to say something, then she shook her head "It's not important."

Lex put her hand on her hip and gave her a long look "I'd trust you a lot more if you stopped keeping things back from me Professor."

Iversson smiled tightly "Alexa, you know I have the utmost respect for you, but you have never been especially candid with me so I'm sure you understand."

Lex frowned, disappointed at not getting a more friendly response. Diana Weyland's ploy to harden her antagonism against the Professor had quite the opposite effect. Since seeing Iversson's guard come down she felt a lot more warmth towards her. She'd always assumed the Iversson's apparent sympathy for her to be an act but now she was beginning to wonder if it might be genuine.

"I thought we were beginning to understand one another." She thought "I never imagined she might be a mother too. Of course she might be lying but… she looked pretty broken up when she told me about her son. Maybe she does understand, maybe… maybe I could even persuade her to help me."

Despite all these thoughts running through her head she didn't quite trust her shifting feelings. "I've got to harden my heart." She told herself "I haven't been around other humans for such a long time; there's a good chance my instincts are wrong. I have to remember she's still working for Weyland. After all," Her eyes narrowed "Philandering men aren't the only ones who can use lies and sob stories to gain your sympathy."


"Do you think they know?" Isaac asked as they sat together on the bed, pretending to play with the board game.

Both children understood what he was talking about without him having to say it.

Since the first night that Isaac had sneaked into Selim's bedroom, they had seen each other every night. Selim would pretend to be asleep until the adults left and then he would wait, watching the ventilation grill until finally it would swing open and Isaac would drop silently to the floor. The only occasion he had not done so had been the previous evening. After his visit to Island North, Isaac had been so distressed and frightened that Iversson had to stay with him until he fell asleep.

"I do not think so." Selim glanced furtively at his mother, she was watching him but at least she was smiling so she wasn't angry "I think we got away with it."

"You know what we should do?" Isaac's face had mischief written all over it "Tonight we should both climb out of this room and go explore! Wouldn't that be awesome?"

Selim squirmed where he sat "I do not know if I should," He said reluctantly "My Mother says I have to be careful or I will not recover as quickly."

"What's wrong with you?" Isaac demanded "Why aren't we allowed to play properly? Are you sick?"

"I am fine!" Selim didn't like to admit to being weak "It is just my Mother worrying; my Father always says she worries about me too much."

Isaac looked down at the floor. He seemed to have something weighing on his mind "Selim," He said "Do you believe in monsters?"

Selim wasn't sure if he did "I do not know, I suppose so."

"Have you ever seen one?"

Selim thought about it for a moment "What do they look like?"

Isaac paused. After coming back from Island North he had spent the rest of the night enmeshed in horrible nightmares where the monster interrogated him; asking questions he only half understood while Diana Weyland gripped his shoulders in her blood red claws. Sometimes in the dream, Diana and the monster were the same person; sometimes the creature was carrying out its threat, Diana's inside-out body looking like an empty suit of clothes flapping in the breeze.

He swallowed hard "Big and ugly, really ugly," He said "With sharp teeth and shiny eyes."

Selim considered this. He'd seen a lot of creatures fitting this description whilst out hunting with his father – crocodiles, large lizards and other beasts – but he wasn't sure they qualified as monsters. They could give you a shock if they leapt up out of the undergrowth right in front of you, but the thought of them didn't keep him awake afterwards. Once you saw they could be killed or trapped you realised they were just animals, not terrors to make you shiver with fear in the night. He'd helped Mei'Savir trap and kill a lot of these kinds of animals. Some of them tasted really good.

The things his mother and father had told him about hunting together probably did count as monsters but he had never seen them, only heard the spine chilling accounts of it.

On the other hand, he didn't want to be outdone.

"I see them all the time." He said "My father and I have tracked and killed them on many hunts. My mother also has done this."

"Really?" Isaac gasped "So you know how to kill one?"

Selim was sure of answer to that "Yes, they are not very difficult to kill. You can use your blades or trap them or shoot them. It really depends how big they are."

Isaac absorbed this silently. He was wondering if he should tell his new friend about the monster he'd seen on Island North. Maybe Selim would laugh at him for being scared, he certainly seemed to have more knowledge on the subject than Isaac did. If Selim's parents killed monsters maybe he didn't need to be scared of them.

Finally he decided the lure of hearing what Selim thought outweighed the fear of being laughed at "I saw a monster last night!" He said.

Selim was intrigued. He'd wondered why Isaac had not turned up the previous evening "Where was it?"

"Over on Island North, in this horrible hot room. It spoke to me."

"What did it say?" Selim had never heard any of the creatures he'd hunted speak before.

Isaac frowned. Even thinking about what the monster had said disturbed him but he repeated the words as best he could.

Selim blinked.

"The monster was speaking yautja?" He said, disbelievingly.

Isaac was defensive "Don't you believe me? I told you - "

"It said it would do that to you?"

"Not me!" Isaac shook his head vigorously "It said it to Diana."

"Who?"

"She runs this place, I hate her too." Isaac frowned "She was the one who wanted me to go see it and she pushed me right up to it and I thought it was going to get me! Then it got really angry and then it said those words."

Selim was shocked. An adult had made Isaac go into a room where a monster was? Had pushed him close to it, worse had used him as a shield against it? His mother would never do such a thing. His father certainly wouldn't, quite the reverse. They would always step in to protect him if a monster – if the prey – got too close. Any adult was supposed to do this. Any adult with honour.

"Where is Island North?" He asked "Is it near?"

"You have to go over the sea to reach it."

"So it is a long way over the sea?"

"No, there's a bridge between there and here. It's not that far."

"So it could get over here then?"

Isaac looked at him in horror. That was the thought that had kept him awake much of the night before. Hearing Selim say it out loud made him suddenly feel the awful gut-twisting fear again.

"What if… the monster comes for me?"


In the lowest level of Island North, Danzig stood back with a frustrated little sigh. Another… incubator lost before hatching could take place. It really was too inconvenient. His work was already suffering from a lack of such test subjects. Even with the financial might of Weyland Corps behind him, he never had enough but he carried on because this was a labour of love.

It had begun when he was selected to be the most senior scientist on the company's team that had followed in Charles Weyland's footsteps a few years back and revisited Bouvetøya Island in Antarctica. Professor Iversson had not accompanied them. She'd been too busy supervising the care of her two year old hybrid duplicate.

"Entirely her loss!" He reflected smugly.

For him Antarctica had been an epiphany. He'd been expecting something pretty amazing but really nothing could have prepared him for such an awe-inspiring find. Not the Pyramid, although it had been badly damaged by powerful explosives, some portion of it still remained and that was fairly incredible.

But no, what had excited Danzig were the eggs. Huge, leathery things fixed to the floor by long coiling roots. All frozen they were when he first found them; covered in a thick coating of frost. They'd brought them back here still on ice. He'd thought they must be dead, that surely no creature could survive such inhospitable conditions. That was before he'd known about the Hive – as he called them.

Now he knew and the more he found out the more lost in admiration he was. They were such a perfect system. They represented an evolutionary zenith - so purely and solely designed for one purpose: to pillage all living things for their own ends. Danzig looked down at the still twitching form on his operating table and frowned. Of course humanity had form on that score but compared to the Hive, man was just a fumbling neophyte. His clean predatory drives were clouded by all sorts of muddy thinking to do with morality and religion and sentimentality. "It's as Nietzsche says," He thought "'Morality is just the herd-instinct in the individual.' For a scientist like me it is meaningless."

He wiped some perspiration from his upper lip; it was very hot down here. This room was kept at the same sweaty climate as the holding cell upstairs and now the butchers shop smell of blood was becoming stronger. He had been working all night without really noticing but now it suddenly seemed overpowering.

He sighed. Such a messy process, but in the end he knew it would be worth it. His incubators were never going to last long but recently his ministrations had been hastening their demise rather sooner than he'd like. It was causing him to go through his supply of test subjects much faster than before. Now he wasn't just using them for hatching – he had a much more complex goal in mind. Danzig had discovered something; something that would give him protection from the Hive and allow him to walk amongst them.

He was trying to achieve something greater than merely increasing the sum total of man's knowledge – a worthy aim but rather unambitious.

No, what Danzig saw when he looked at the Hive was nothing less than the advancement of human beings to the next level.

If he could control this masterpiece of evolution and become its master himself, surely that would make him a god.