Later in the science-lab, Bishop made preparations for a dissection of the alien specimen he'd brought up from the planet below. Any other scientist would probably tremble with anticipation and curiosity for a procedure like this - no one had ever come close to study a full-grown alien before. It was an opportunity that many biologists would be prepared to surrender one of their limbs for. The dead alien lay on a stone-table that was intended for examinations of biological substances – the surface was easy to clean and sterilize afterwards, and besides: Bishop hoped that the stone would be able to withstand the acidic blood should it still be active. It was interesting stuff this acid the alien had for blood. It was highly corrosive when it was fresh, but loses its caustic potential after some time as it oxidizes. When the team had gotten back to the derelict the same morning and Bishop had been lowered back down into the cargo hold, he'd discovered that the acidic properties of the first dead alien had been neutralized after the couple of hours that had gone by. Therefore he deemed it safe to bring the carcass back to the ship without risking the blood to spill inside the dropship and ruin it, but it was still wise to proceed carefully.
Before he began, he connected a small documentation recorder directly into his cranial circuits via one of his receptacles. It wasn't the first time he had used it. He had taken the time to download his whole research from his memory banks during the past night into the recorder, including all he had learned about the facehuggers he'd examined back at Hadley's Hope three years earlier together with what he had witnessed about the alien Queen whom had followed them back up to the Sulaco. So close it had been that all of it had been lost. After he'd been so badly damaged when the EEV crash-landed on Fiorina 161, all his memories had begun to disappear one by one. Fortunately, Ripley had connected him to the flight-recorder of the escape craft which detected the loss of information in his mind and it had immediately made a back-up copy of everything before it had been permanently lost. Bishop didn't want to risk the same thing to happen again, so he had begun doing a back-up of the back-up. He hadn't stopped there – since he had access to Ripley's recorded memories from the hard-drives of her cryotube, he made sure to include that information as well. It was already starting to become a whole journal about the aliens.
Being a synthetic had its advantages: he was a computer talking to a computer within the recorder, so he could input all his discoveries directly into it without having to speak into the microphone, and that left his hands free to do his work. It was time to begin. From a table beside him he picked up a laser-cutter and brought it to the semi-transparent dome of the alien's elongated skull. Carefully he cut into the silicon-based flesh, hoping that the laser would cauterize the wound as he moved it downwards, blocking the seeping blood and keep it inside the veins.
The door to the lab suddenly opened and somebody entered. Thanks to Bishop's synthetic reflexes and motorized skills, his hands remained steady and did not sway from the cutting procedure.
"I need to talk to you, Bishop," Hicks demanded.
"Please give me a moment here, Hicks," Bishop said patiently. "I'm in a delicate procedure."
"And I'm in a desperate mood! Had I had any choice in the matter, I wouldn't have come to you about it as I am quite annoyed with you, but I don't have that luxury!"
"What's the problem?" Bishop asked without averting his eyes from the operating table.
"Newt!" Hicks said, exasperated. "Do you have any idea how upset she is right now?"
"I can imagine. And I deeply regret it. Unfortunately, it was all expected to happen eventually as the mission proceeded along."
"You knew that this might happen?"
"It was unavoidable. I had hoped that her current state of mind would stabilize before the first batch of eggs was brought up so that she wouldn't lose it, but the unexpected encounter with the aliens down there distraught her even more than I had first anticipated." As Bishop spoke, he finished cutting the skin of the carcass with the laser. He took a pair of tongs which he used to widen the opening, revealing the see-through bone underneath. The creature's brain was visible underneath.
"She's distraught all right," Hicks said. "So much that she's started to hate you. And for some reason: even me."
"She doesn't hate you, Hicks."
"You didn't hear her in the corridor, Bishop. You didn't hear her hateful tone towards everything."
"Don't let it get to you, Hicks," Bishop said as he started to drill a hole in the skull with the laser. "She didn't mean anything she said - it was simply her fear talking. And it is not uncommon for children to say something that they don't mean when they're angry with their parents."
"But I'm not her parent?"
"With Ripley gone, you're the closest thing she has to one."
"You're joking?"
"I'm capable of telling jokes, but I don't find any reason to do so in this case, much less the necessity for it."
"But she just said that she hates me! She won't talk to me anymore!"
"That's because she's terrified of the thought of losing you the same way she lost her real parents and Ripley. She hopes that by distancing herself from you it might diminish that fear somewhat. She will find that it won't and then she will come back. You're just going to have to be patient."
"You sound awfully sure about that?" Hicks questioned.
"Isn't that the reason why you came to me to talk about it?" The drilling was complete. There was now a small hole in the dome of the skull that went all the way down to the brain. Bishop put the laser-cutter away. "I've had access to Newt's psychological profile thanks to the hard-drive of her cryotube – I know how she thinks." The android now picked up a long but thin rod that was connected to a small generator which he switched on. But he continued his conversation with Hicks during the whole time. "You like her, don't you?"
"I…" Hicks hesitated for a short moment. "Yes. Very much."
"And she knows it - or at least she suspects it. And she in turn likes you very much in the only way she knows in her age: as a father-figure. And every child expects a father to be able to solve anything."
It all became clear to Hicks now. "But I can't solve this alien-problem. I've disappointed her."
"What you did was that you happened to confirm her worst fear. If you can't do anything about the threat from the aliens, then who can?" Bishop inserted the thin rod into the brain of the creature through the drill-hole. Suddenly the body on the table began to twitch.
"It's still alive!" Hicks exclaimed in surprise.
"No," Bishop said just as calm as always. "It's just reflexes. I'm pressing on some nerves within it. There might be more of this coming as I'm getting ahead with my experiments."
"Are you sure this is safe?"
"With them, who can be certain?" Bishop said, this time with a smile. Then he charged the generator with thirty amps.
"What are you doing anyway?" Hicks asked.
"I've inserted a stem line into what I believe is its locus coeruleus. I'm hoping to find the right frequency of electrical stimuli to control the central nervous system - just like what the doctors did with the two of you during your resuscitation."
"You're not trying to revive this thing, are you?"
"Of course not. What I want to do is to charge the neural pathways to simulate neural activity so that I can take an EEG as well as an EKG. That way I can determine how much portion of the brain the creatures are using. You humans only use a small portion of your brain, so I just want to make a comparison. I need to attempt it before the cellular necrosis proceeds too far."
Bishop turned up the power another ten so that the stem line was charged with forty amps. The carcass began to twitch even more violently.
"I don't like this!" Hicks protested. "What if you happen to activate its regenerative system and it starts to heal?"
"That would be interesting, wouldn't it? However I think it's safe to assume that it isn't a zombie."
"I won't risk it! Turn it off!"
"I know what I'm doing, Hicks. This is just…" Suddenly the carcass half sat up and shrieked – its jaw opening up and the inner mouth shot out and snapped into thin air.
"It's alive!" Hicks was almost certain of it this time and he was prepared to run out of the lab. But then the rod inserted into the skull fell away, and the alien slammed back down on the table and remained motionless. Bishop picked up the rod from the floor and held it up.
"Hmm. It appears the acidic blood within the brain was not entirely neutralized," He said as he examined the melted and smoking remains of the tip.
"Is it dead?" Hicks asked. "I mean, it got up and screamed…"
"That was a primitive reaction that's common among most creatures. A wounded and dying animal's most instinctive reaction would be to lash out and kill anything that comes to close. It's a primordial instinct in a last attempt to save its own life. It was a strong automatic reaction which resides deep within the core of its nervous system. Nothing more."
"Nevertheless, I don't want you to attempt that again!"
"Not under these conditions anyway." Hicks thought that it sounded like Bishop just avoided a promise to not experiment with a stem line again. He decided that it was pointless to argue about it though. Bishop was after all acting under the influence of his programming that made him obedient to the Company. He would do their bidding no matter how much Hicks spoke against it. He was just glad that Newt wasn't in there with them as it happened, she might've been terrified out of her wits. Hicks suddenly remembered…
"We were talking about Newt. You're certain she's avoiding me because she is afraid to lose me to the aliens and she can't bear the thought?"
"Positive."
"So what's the deal with Fixer? She spends most of her time with him now."
"That's because he's the only civilian onboard besides herself, not counting Morse. Right now all the military personnel is associated with bringing the alien specimens aboard the ship, something she is most uncomfortable with to put it mildly."
"Is that also part of the reason she's distancing herself from me?"
"It is. She likes you, but you're part of an enemy group to her even though it is involuntarily on your side. That's why she's so angry and confused right now and that's why she can only relate to Fixer. He's a mechanic just like her father was, and that is a concept which she is familiar with. To her he could very well be a fellow colonist."
"So what can I do?" Hicks asked, facing a new defeat.
"For the moment you can't do anything. You must let her come into terms with the situation for herself. But be ready to accept her when she does. It might not be long before she urgently needs you for some reason."
"With a new batch of eggs coming up tonight, that moment might come sooner than I might expect," Hicks concluded.
Morning or evening didn't make much difference aboard a ship. The lights in the corridors were constant, and the sun seemed to remain in the same spot of space when you looked out the viewport. Only the passing time of a chronometer controlled the routines of Earth's 24-hour cycle aboard the vessel of the Hercules, but there was no romance in it. Newt wasn't even used to it. The rotation of her planet designated LV-426 was different to that of Earth – as it only had a two hour-rotation, days were short and always so gloomy from dawn to dusk - but it still gave an impression of time passing by. Aboard the Hercules, one moment seemed to be the same as the one before and there was nothing to look forward to in the next one. Newt hated it. Not only because she was restless, but also because there was nothing that could help to preoccupy her from the pain that continued to torture her chest. It had become much worse since the morning and she even began to feel quite ill.
She could no longer deny it to herself. She knew she was sick and she was scared because of that, but she felt she had no one to turn to for help. Hicks and Bishop were not around, and besides she had made the mistake of alienating them. Fixer was her friend, but he was still part of Colonel Decker's crew, so she felt apprehension of confiding her illness to him. All she could do was to continue to help Fixer with his work, hoping that the pain would eventually begin to go away – but it was as constant as time itself aboard this ship. She and Fixer had just been to one of the storage-compartments to pick up spare-parts. Newt was pushing the trolley, but as she moved it along the corridor back to Fixer's workshop, she felt her legs getting wobbly. She stumbled slightly before she managed to regain her balance, but the damage was done.
"Are you okay, Newt?" Fixer asked her.
"…Fine," she answered weakly.
"Newt, you don't look okay. You're very pale. I think we better get you to sickbay."
"No!" she protested. "I'm okay. I'm just… tired. All I need to do is to lie down and sleep for a while. Can't we just go back to your workshop?"
"Are you sure?" the little man asked, not entirely convinced.
"Yes," she said giving him a smile that was just as fake as her words of being all right, and that made up Fixer's mind. He was going to get her to sickbay. Careful not to alert her of his intentions, he led her down one of the side-corridors that would lead them to the new destination. Newt followed along hunched over the handle of the trolley, not really watching where they were headed. So far, so good. It all went well, until Newt discovered a familiar panel on the wall of the corridor they just gotten in to.
"Where are we?" she asked.
"We're on our way back to the workshop…" Fixer began to reply, trying to sound natural.
"This is the corridor we worked in this morning! How'd we get here?"
"We must've taken a wrong turn…"
"What's the time? Are they on their way back?" Fixer understood what she meant and he could've kicked himself for not thinking of that. This corridor was the route the soldiers transported the alien eggs through to get to the storage compartment. If the dropship had returned and the crew was on their way with their load…!
They were. It was too late. The first soldiers came into view with their terrible cargo on the radio-controlled trolleys, approaching the two. Fixer's attempt to lead the girl to sickbay now resulted her having to face her nightmare once again. And to Fixer's dismay, the two leading soldiers were the two he liked the least of the 'Rawhides' - it was Crabbe: the taunting moron and Dagger: the drugged fool.
Crabbe, in accordance with his character, instantly threw them a rude comment. "Well, look who's here to greet us. The twin midgets."
"Yeah. Tiny and Tiny. He he hee," Dagger slurred, joining in on the taunting. "Quite the perfect couple, aren't they? Same size and with matching uniforms. They even have the same name-tags on them." It appeared that Dagger had gotten over his breakdown from the day before, and it was no wonder. Fixer could see it in the soldier's eyes: he was high on his drugs again.
"So when are you two going to get hitched, then?" Crabbe remarked with a facial expression that was devoid of any kind of respect.
"C'mon, leave her out of it!" Fixer snapped back. "She hasn't done anything to you to deserve that!"
"She's the 'sissy's' little pet," Crabbe sneered. "That's enough for me." Newt cringed and averted her eyes. She knew she wasn't liked much among this bunch, but the taunts still hurt.
"Look, why don't you just get your load going to the storage-room like you're supposed to and just let us be on our way?" Fixer said.
"Don't try to tell us what to do, Tiny! Or I might just squash the two of you." Crabbe went to the door and touched the controls. It began to roll aside with a pneumatic 'pschht', but suddenly it just stopped and didn't move.
"What the hell is this?" Crabbe roared, slamming his hand to the control panel to get a reaction. "I thought you fixed this door, Tiny?"
"W-we did!" Fixer stammered, not understanding what the problem could be. Was there too much power-feed to the circuit-board that has made the fuse to burn out again?
"Well, obviously you didn't do much of a good job with it, did you?" Crabbe's posture was threatening. "You had better get this door open right now, or I'll make you eat one of these eggs!"
Fixer went over to the door and tried the controls. Nothing happened. There was no air being sucked out of the vacuum-containers that would pull the door open. There was no time to open the panel in the wall and replace the fuse again – he would have to pump the air out manually. Fixer opened a small access-hatch underneath the control-panel to get into the small compartment that housed the manual switch. It looked like the T-shaped handle of a bicycle-pump. He twisted a knob that would direct the airflow out, and then he began to pull and thrust the handle. The door began do open, but slowly.
"Hurry it up, Tiny. We don't have all day!" Crabbe urged impatiently.
"I'm doing this as fast as it can go!" Fixer snapped at him.
"Don't try to get smart with me, Tiny!"
Even Newt felt a bit of impatience – not just because of the two evil soldiers, but also because she was forced to be in the vicinity of the alien eggs. They were sealed with the claws, but that didn't make her feel any more secure around them. She kept her eyes closely on the grotesque ovoid shapes, being ready to run if just one of those petals came loose underneath the spindly legs that was supposed to hold them in place. Just like with the first batch from the morning, these eggs rattled and shivered as the parasites within struggled to get out since they felt the presence of hosts suitable for cocooning. Newt shivered.
Dagger caught her trembling, and began to taunt her about it. "Hehe. Don't tell me you're afraid of those things?" Newt looked at him with a displeased expression, but didn't answer him. And it turned out she didn't have to - somebody else did it for her.
"Of course she's afraid of them. And that makes her the wise one." The prisoner Morse came up to them from the corridor behind the little girl. "You should be afraid of them too, Dagger."
"Why should I?" Dagger instantly challenged back in anger. In accordance to his character, Dagger would not allow anyone to call him a coward. "You got something you want to say, Jailbird?"
"Haven't we all got something to say? More to the truth is: is that which what we've got to say even relevant to the situation?"
"What's with you being so damn cryptic all the time?" Crabbe growled at the felon.
"Yeah!" Dagger agreed. "Give me a straight answer instead. Did you just refer to me as some kind of coward?"
Morse smiled. "I didn't say that. All I said was that the girl was the wise one for fearing those eggs."
Dagger put the muzzle of his rifle under Morse's jaw. "Did you just imply that I'm a fool?"
Morse's smile didn't falter. He didn't even look uncomfortable with the tip of a gun pressing against his chin. "Again your words – not mine."
"I ought to blow your stinking head off!" Dagger spat.
"You find our conversation justifiable for murder?" Morse asked, still as calm.
"Leave him, Dagger," Crabbe then said. "Tiny just got the door open. Let's dispose of these things so we can go and eat supper." Meanwhile a second pair of soldiers approached them from behind, moving another set of trolleys loaded with eggs with them. Their attention was instantly attracted to the commotion ahead.
"I'm not going anywhere until Jailbird here spills exactly what he means!" Dagger roared in reply. Morse simply shrugged and began to speak.
"I only noticed that you seemed to imply to the child that those eggs are not to be feared. But why shouldn't she fear them? They wiped out her people, and that experience gave her the wisdom to be cautious around them as it is a natural reaction. Not fearing them would be quite unnatural, and no wisdom would then have been gained. The question is: what has experience taught you, Dagger? Some big versions of them almost killed you down there as I recall?"
"They didn't manage to kill me!" Dagger pointed out.
"No, but they did manage to make you pee in your pants," one of the newcomers; Cracken said. The corridor was filled with laughter at Dagger's expense.
"Did not!" he shouted. "I wasn't afraid of them!"
"Sure you weren't." Dobermann said. "You only cried like a baby down there. I'm surprised you didn't call for your mommy to come and help you." Another set of laughter filled the corridor. Dagger became all red in his face as his manhood became threatened.
"I'm not afraid of them!" Dagger shouted, for some reason in Morse's face. Probably because the felon was the cause for the humiliation he was feeling right now. "I am not!"
Morse's eyes glittered. And almost inaudibly, he whispered to the soldier: "Prove it."
Dagger faced his taunting companions with determination in his face. "I'll show you I'm not afraid of them!" It was most likely because of the drugs he took. As the JOY inhibited his fear of death, it also dulled his sense for reasonable actions. No sane person would even think of walking up to one of the eggs, twist the handle on top of the claw to open the legs that locked down and secured the terrible sphere and then remove the entire device all together – but Dagger did just all that. The laughter stopped and was replaced with shouts of disbelief and terror.
Crabbe: "Are you crazy?!"
Newt: "NO! Don't do that!"
Dobermann: "Put it back!"
"What the hell are you doing?!" The last one was Hicks, who made up the rear guard of the last set of trolleys loaded with eggs, and who made it to the scene just in time to witness the drama that was about to unfold. Dagger was in a secondary rush as the adrenaline pumped his JOY-filled blood through his systems. It made him look raving mad.
"Is this what you all are so afraid of?" he said loudly so that everybody would hear him. "I'm better than you! I'm not afraid!"
Hicks tried to rush up to the front of the line of trolleys to get the maniac away from the egg he had just released before it was too late, but there were too many people in the way, so he would have to circle around them. And to his horror he realized that he wouldn't get there in time. The top of the egg opened up like a flower as the four petals folded themselves outwards. Dagger in his drugged state wasn't in the least aware of the danger he was in. Instead, he leaned in over the opening of the egg and shouted down into it.
"WOULD YOU LIKE TO HAVE A PIECE OF ME, YOU LITTLE SHIT?! GIVE IT YOUR BEST SHOT! I'M NOT AFRAID OF YOU! I'M NOT… GLRRKH!" A brief shriek and a blurred movement – that was all everybody managed to register as the top of the egg seemed to explode in Daggers face, and as he fell back, all the observers could see the obscene form of a many-fingered hand wrapped around the soldier's head. Something finally got through Dagger's drug-dazed mind because he screamed in terror – but as he did, he felt the shape of some sort of a fat worm forcing itself down his throat, and that made him panic even more.
Dagger wasn't the only one who screamed – Newt did too as she relived in her mind how those horrible crablike things had done the same to her father, and twice before they'd almost got to her as well. Hicks finally reached the wriggling victim of the facehugger and as he had done to the parasite that had attacked Ripley three years earlier, he grabbed hold on it in an attempt to pull it away. But this facehugger had already fixed itself in position with its long tail wrapped around the soldier's neck and it refused to dislodge, no matter how hard Hicks pulled at it. Dagger's muffled screams finally ceased and his body became absolutely limb – the creature now had him under its complete power. Hicks felt the defeat overwhelm him as he let go of the monstrosity. From this point it would only end with Dagger's demise no matter what they did. Just like with John L. Marachuk, a citizen of Hadley's Hope, the host would die even if they did manage to get it off before the embryo implantation was completed.
"What's going on here?" Colonel Decker had arrived, probably lured by the shouts and screams. "Who's responsible for this insubordination? I gave specific orders that the samples were to be brought to the storage room immediately!"
"I-it's Dagger, Sir. H-he..." Crabbe stammered and indicated to the comatose shape on the deck. Decker just threw a glance and then he roared.
"This is a clear violation of directives! The samples were not to be tampered with! Who did this?"
"He did it himself, Sir!" Cracken was quick to say.
"And you just let him do it?" Decker shot back. Cracken gulped. The colonel did a quick survey over the trolleys. "Did he do any damage to any of the other specimens?" Hicks couldn't believe it. The fact that one of his soldiers was down and in need of help should be the top priority to any commanding officer – but not to Colonel Decker. The objective of the mission was all that mattered to him. Newt couldn't believe it either.
"You idiots!" the girl shouted. Everybody turned to her with puzzled expressions because of her outburst. "I told you this would happen! I told you they couldn't be contained! Now its beginning: they're breaking free, and they will destroy you!"
Hicks realized with a sense of despair that this was the breaking point for the child. She has finally snapped from the fear and stress she had felt of the mission she'd been forced to participate in. Tears streamed down her enraged face as she continued to have a fit. Hicks reached out to her, tried to calm her – but she jerked away and continued to scream.
"You'll all pay for this! They'll kill you! YOU WILL ALL DIE!"
And then she turned on her heel and ran away. Hicks cried out for her, begging her to come back but she wouldn't listen. Ignoring the situation with Dagger and the facehugger, Hicks bolted off after her. Even if the child wouldn't admit it, she needed Hicks more now than what anyone else around here did – leave the fallen soldier to his team-mates and his commander. Fixer seemed to come to same conclusion because he too ran after the corporal. The people that were left behind just watched them leave in confusion, wondering what the big deal with the girl was.
"Somebody will pay, all right," Decker said, totally untouched by the child's threat of an upcoming death. "And Dagger is the one who is to be held accountable for that." He turned to his troopers. "Take the rest of the specimens to the storage-chamber. Two men will take this low-life out of here."
Dobermann and Samson stepped forward and picked up Dagger's unconscious form. They both regretted volunteering though as they got into close vicinity to the pulsing parasite on the face, but it was too late to back out now. "We'll take him to the infirmary, Sir," Samson said.
"Don't bother," Decker said. "There's nothing to be done for him now. Lock him up in the quarantine."
"Quarantine, Sir?" Dobermann asked in surprise.
"Was that a 'No copy' on my orders, trooper?"
"N-no, SIR! I copy, SIR! We'll take him to quarantine, SIR!"
"Newt! NEWT!" Hicks rushed around the corridors, but there was no sign of the girl. And he couldn't figure out where she might've gone to. It was all so frustrating - why was she still avoiding him? He remembered Bishop's words that the child would urgently need the adult again sooner or later, and if this wasn't the moment, then when would it be? Bishop wasn't even aboard right now – he had requested to remain down inside the derelict ship for research of something until the next pick-up, so Hicks was on his own. Not that the synthetic would've been much help in this case anyway.
His hopes were raised when he heard the running of small footsteps coming up behind him, but it turned to disappointment when he saw that it was only Fixer. "Wait up, Corporal," the small man called.
"What do you want?" Hicks asked him angrily. "Haven't you done enough damage already? What made you take her back to that corridor where you knew we were transporting the eggs through? She didn't need to see that!"
"I'm deeply sorry about that," the little man panted, catching his breath. "I was just taking a short cut on the way to the infirmary. That was not supposed to happen."
"The infirmary?"
"You don't know, do you? She's sick. She looked ready to collapse when I decided to take her there."
"All the more reason to find her, then," Hicks said, now feeling extremely worried.
"I think I know where she might have gone to. I promised not to tell, but she has found a spot in the ventilation ducts where she felt that she could be alone."
"The ventilation ducts. Of course!" Naturally the girl would go there - it was a familiar territory to her. Adults would never imagine why they would even enter the mazes that the ducts formed - they would soon get lost in there. But Newt had the ability to memorize every route she took, so she would never lose her way in those. It is the perfect hidey-hole for a child. He felt stupid for not thinking of it - he had after all seen her outside one of those ducts earlier. "Can you take me there?" he asked Fixer.
"There's an access-shaft big enough for you to enter further down this corridor."
"Lead on, then."
As Fixer had said, there was a protective grille in the wall that led into the air ducts. It was no problem for Fixer to enter it with his small frame, but for Hicks it was cramped - a repeat from when Newt had led them through the tight conduits of her colony years before. It was a weird memory since in his mind, it didn't seem so long ago. He still wasn't used to the fact that he has been 'dead' for three years.
After a while Hicks was really starting to become impatient. His hands and knees screamed in protest after crawling inside such a tight space, but he also felt how the rising anxiety for Newt's apparent illness was starting to get to him. He wanted so much to find her, to make sure that she was okay. But there was the risk that the child would hear Fixer and he approach her position – the ducts carried the noise they were making a long way ahead, and she might then go somewhere else to avoid a confrontation.
"Is it much farther?" Hicks asked the little man.
"No, it's just around that bend."
"Newt, are you there?" Hicks called ahead. "Please don't run away, honey. I just want to talk to you." They came into the cross-section that was Newt's hideout. It was too dark to see anything, but he could swear he heard a kind of a moan. He asked Fixer if he had a light and the dwarf produced a penlight from one of his pockets. They found Newt slumped to the floor against the far wall – she looked almost lifeless. But then she raised her head slowly, squinting against the light. Her pale lips trembled as she struggled to speak in a weak, pleading voice.
"Hicks… M-my chest…"
The two males saw it now – the girl was lying in a pool of blood that seemed to be oozing from her chest-area. And in the dim light Hicks could swear that he saw something pushing from the inside, trying to break out of her ribcage. The corporal's anguished cry sounded all over the ventilation system throughout the whole ship.