Lex was waiting for Selim to go to sleep. He seemed about to go under, his eyelids were fluttering – then finally they drifted closed. After a few minutes she got up, stretched and walked to the window to stare out over the ocean, thinking.
After a moment she heard Selim's voice saying "Mei'Varsi?"
She turned, surprised. She thought he'd dozed off "Yes sweetheart?"
"Are there such things as monsters?"
She was taken aback, not knowing how to respond for a moment. Unfortunately she knew absolutely that the answer to his question was 'yes'.
"Yes Selim, there are monsters." She thought "I've seen them; spoken with them; fought them… killed them."
Some monsters were immediately recognisable; others had been less easy to spot – outwardly human but still monsters underneath. She looked into his luminous eyes, wondering if this was the kind of bedtime story she ought to be telling him.
"Why do you ask?" She said finally, coming back to sit by the bed, not wanting to lie to him but shrinking from telling the truth. He seemed to be hesitating, wondering if he should say any more. She guessed this had been prompted by something Isaac had told him. Selim had never been especially prone to night terrors before.
She waited patiently, knowing he would tell her eventually. Maybe the other boy had sworn him to secrecy but Selim was still her little boy, he always told her in the end.
"Isaac says he saw one," He said finally "He said that the human female who is in charge of this place took him to see one. Somewhere called the North Island. He said she made him go into a room where there was a monster. It was wrong of her, was it not Mei'Varsi?"
"If what he said is true, then yes it was very wrong. Do you think he's telling the truth?"
"I suppose so." He looked down, obviously unhappy at the thought that his new friend might be a liar "He says… the monster spoke to him."
"What did this monster look like?" She asked "What did it say?"
He told her.
Lex hid her surprise, Selim might not recognise his father from Isaac's description but she sure as hell did.
Selim was still watching her anxiously "But how would a monster learn to speak yautja Mei'Varsi?"
"I don't think you need to worry Selim." She said finally "The creature Isaac saw isn't a danger to you or him. Isaac misunderstood. Try to forget about it." She didn't want to tell him that it was Scar Isaac had seen, that he was being kept prisoner. Selim would be distraught at the thought of Scar imprisoned and in trouble – or that his new friend could think his father was so terrifying.
"How do you know?" He persisted "It could get over here and – "
"Trust me, I know." She smiled and stroked the side of his face "I promise."
When he'd fallen asleep at last, she thought about what he'd said and couldn't help a small smile
"So Scar told Weyland he's going to turn her inside out," She thought "He's not in the habit of making idle threats. If – no – when he gets free I wouldn't want to be in her shoes, or even standing too near her!"
Her hatred against Weyland flared, she had used Isaac – a child so very much like her son – as a pawn…
"That woman is as toxic as radioactive waste." She thought grimly "This was obviously all part of her mind games; trying to make Scar think it was Selim – she obviously doesn't realise that he can tell the difference. He'd work out pretty quickly that Isaac isn't his son, they'd smell different. Even so, I bet it was a shock to him just like it was for me. He'd be confused, he doesn't even know that Selim is alright like I do. No wonder he said that to her. She didn't care if that little boy was scared out of his wits. I'll bet she would do anything to get… what she…wants… "
Suddenly an idea came to her, a way she could get to Scar, a phrase that her captor had used popped into her head: "… can't you ask your alien friend? Surely he knows…"
"Weyland wants information about yautja technology but she also enjoys making us both suffer. I'll bet she'd jump at the chance to take me to Scar if it means she can inflict pain on me and get the information she's after into the bargain. All I need to do is convince her that seeing him would be a clever way to do both."
Lex frowned, turning the idea over in her mind "I have to be careful, I can't let her know it's what I want – she has to think it's her idea."
Over the coming days Isaac started to spent more and more of his time with her and Selim. Usually this meant they had to be under the watchful eye of Farrell, who seemed to be Isaac's minder, bodyguard and jailer all rolled into one.
Lex disliked him intensely. Despite having to spend so much time with the boy Farrell never showed him any kind of warmth.
This particular day Farrell had been teasing Isaac, baiting him until the boy was stirred up into a fizzing ball of rage. Then the man had lost his own temper and shouted at him, calling him a horrible little deformed brat.
At this Isaac had really exploded. He looked like Scar in miniature when angry, breathing rapidly, eyes glowing, hands clenched into fists "Don't you dare call me names!" He yelled, his voice shrill with temper "I'll tell my mother and then she'll – "
"You don't have a mother!" Farrell bellowed in his face "You were grown in a lab! You're an experiment not a child!"
Lex was shocked "Alright, maybe Iversson isn't his real mother," She thought "But Farrell doesn't care about the truth, he just wants to belittle Isaac's relationship with the only parent he's got. He's doing it out of spite, to crush him!"
Seeing the stricken expression on the boy's face she felt a sudden and terrible rage on his behalf. She stood up and put herself in between them, staring down Farrell furiously "Don't you ever speak to him like that again." She said quietly.
He checked, then he remembered he was meant to be in charge "Or what?" He sneered "You're a prisoner here, you can't do shit."
Lex smiled very slightly. Maybe she was a prisoner and she was unarmed, but she'd had plenty of practice at sizing people up and she seriously doubted she'd needed any help dealing with the likes of Farrell. He might be able to play the big man well enough to fool a little boy but she guessed he wouldn't be so keen to tangle with someone who could fight back.
Her black gaze didn't flicker for an instant "Did Iversson ever tell you what happened to the guards at the last facility that held me prisoner?"
"Yeah well, your boyfriend isn't here now!"
"Maybe not, but in the last six years I've learned a lot from him." She stepped closer to him very slowly and deliberately, unnervingly confident.
She remembered facing up to Scar, D'Kand, Khurshad – compared to them staring down Farrell was no challenge. When their faces were only a few inches apart she said, softly enough so the boys couldn't hear "For example, I know how to take the skin off your face with only three cuts. If you slice in the right places it peels right off, just like a mask."
His belligerent expression wavered, then died.
Of course she had never peeled someone's face off or even seen Scar do it to a human being (she put the time when she had seen him skin someone resolutely out of her mind) but Farrell didn't have to know that.
He opened his mouth to speak but she put a finger to his lips "Every time you feel tempted to lose your temper with Isaac," She whispered "Just… remember that."
The look on his face as she turned to rejoin the two boys gave her a great deal of satisfaction.
"I'm really very sorry about this." Said Danzig softly, via the intercom.
He was surprised to find that he actually meant it; the failure of this most recent test run of his invention was indeed deeply regrettable – not least because it might take a few days before he could secure another subject and he had another variant of his hormone mixture to test out.
It had been a stroke of genius, the kind of 'Eureka' moment that every scientist dreamed of and prayed for but that he had never really expected to happen to him.
As a species he'd found, the Hive were incredibly aggressive towards human beings right up until the point where they had managed to impregnate them with one of their larvae. Then they suddenly lost interest in them. When Danzig had realised this he had been intrigued. At first he'd wondered if it was because they were generally cocooned and unable to move so he tested this theory with some subjects who had been exposed and the results had been … exciting. Even test subjects who were unsecured were inspected and then ignored. Of course, it wasn't much use to the test subjects in queston, their days were already numbered (In fact their hours were already numbered, the incubation period for the Hive's larvae tended to last around 18 – 24 hours) but still, it set the wheels of his mind turning "How do they know that particular human has been impregnated? Do they recognise them by sight? Or perhaps by smell? Or do they communicate amongst themselves?"
But, meticulous to a fault, he tested that theory. Even children of the Hive that had hatched out after impregnation had taken place and been kept in isolation still knew not to attack the exposed test subjects.
"It's not because they recognise individual humans then…" He realised, they must have a way of detecting their larvae within a human host. Sight seemed an unlikely marker as the humans didn't look any different to his eye, so he started thinking about their scent.
Blood and skin swabs confirmed it: humans who were incubating the Hive's children produced a very particular cocktail of hormones in their perspiration, something that would warn the adults that they were no longer viable hosts. Immediately he had set about trying to synthesize this chemical compound, to make a perfect imitation that would camouflage a human from them and make it possible ton pass amongst them unharmed. So far success had eluded him.
It was just so frustrating "My reasoning is sound, I know it is!"He thought, staring gloomily through the thick glass at his most recent test subject "The hormone tag should have protected her. They saw through it, but how?"
Yes it was deeply to be regretted, not that his regret made much difference now to the subject in front of him. In her current state she probably couldn't hear him, couldn't hear much of anything. As far as he could make out the Hive kept their hosts in a state of unconsciousness during the intubation process.
"In a way she is the lucky one," He told himself "Her troubles will soon be over, but mine…" Resignedly he turned down the illumination in the Hives' chamber. There would be nothing more of interest to see in there tonight.
"I would prefer they used my carcass as a host for the hard meat." Scar thought cynically "Anything would be better than rotting here like a flaccid sack of blood."
The cell was in darkness, though what would have been impenetrable gloom for a human was less so for his catlike eyes.
He liked the nights. It was certainly preferable to the days when he had to suffer all the various indignities of being handled and jabbed and prodded by a subspecies – "Do not think of them as a subspecies," He mentally reprimanded himself "They were advanced enough to take you captive. It never pays to underestimate ones… enemies."
He exhaled slowly. That was the other thing about the night, the relative peace helped him think "Not as if I can do anything else right now. If I had thought I would ever end up a useless cripple…" Resolutely he severed that chain of thought. "Wallowing in self pity is for fools and weaklings." He told himself "Sain'Ja feel no pity, for themselves or for their enemies."
He could stop himself from feeling maudlin about his situation, but he found it less easy to maintain a sense of detachment about Lex. All this time being held prisoner by her species and he had not seen her. "Is she is a prisoner or has she chosen not to come to see me? What if she has betrayed me?"
At that moment a noise broke into his thoughts as the door to his cell slid open and one of the human males entered. It was Lloyd, the one who smelled of sickly cosmetic lotions rather than the one who reeked of the hard meat.
Scar forced himself to become calm, ears alert for any information. Despite himself he almost looked forward to this human's visits: idiot though he was, his loquacious nature meant that he was a source of news and at present Scar was desperate for any information he could get about the situation.
Tonight though Lloyd was alone and so Scar was deprived of even that meagre diversion. No, instead of his usual unguarded chatter the human was speaking to himself: "Maybe I didn't treat you ….quite as well as I should have…"
At first Scar thought he was talking nonsense. The cadence of his speech was strange, the pitch kept rising and falling, words were strangely elongated.
Suddenly memory fluttered a papery wing. He recalled Lex doing the same, chanting what seemed like gibberish to Selim. "'Singing.'" He thought "The human is 'singing', that is what Lex called it."
This particular human habit he had always found stupid and pointless but in his helpless state he found it wasn't totally abhorrent. It was … not soothing exactly but now he knew human language well enough to understand what it meant the effect was different.
"And I guess I never told you … I'm so happy that you're mine…"
Despite himself Scar found himself actually following the words. It seemed to be some sort of lament or possibly a plea for forgiveness, addressed to someone whom they had wronged. He wondered idly whom this human had wronged and what he had done.
"If I made you feel second best … girl I'm sorry I was blind…"
So this human's dispute was with a female and by the sounds of it, she was a female he had enjoyed sexual relations with. Scar had discovered through bitter experience that in such situations females were disposed to make you sincerely regret your transgressions against them and they were skilled at doing so.
"Perhaps she has repudiated him." He thought "Just as Lex has done to me. Maybe she has decided that I deserved no loyalty because of what I intended: to dispatch the pathetic traitor who called himself her friend. She is impulsive, given to extremes of emotion. She can bear a grudge and nuture implacable hatred… just as I can!"
Now he considered it, this was something they shared. In fact it was something he liked – that he enjoyed – about her. They fought often, they disagreed on so many things, but he always found it exhilarating. The more she fought him the more he wanted. In his rage he had suspected her of betrayal, but he couldn't really believe it. Even now she still preoccupied him.
Then for some reason the human male's voice rose up to a higher volume, the tone melancholy and hollow in this metal room.
"But you were always on my mind… You were always on my mind…"
Scar listened, totally entranced now… fascinated "How can the human know what I am thinking?"
