Author's Note:
Sorry for the delay between chapters -- Real Life ™ got in the way… Keep the reviews coming (positive, or critical; let me know how you feel); they are what keeps me writing (every work of fiction is a desperate cry for attention, after all grin).
Legal Disclaimers: See Chapter One
Chapter Two
Brian's 24-Hour Diner, Chicago
4:34 a.m.
It was beginning to get light out. Fox Mulder knew he could use a shower and a shave. Come to think of it, he could have used a couple more hours of sleep, too. Scully, who had at least managed to sleep on the plane, still looked none too happy to be there, sitting in a cheap diner's booth across the three strangers. Mulder could sympathize. He had taken her to meetings with all kinds of nuts, fanatics, or self-deluded fools.
These three didn't look the part, however.
The woman with the light hair started talking after a tired-looking waitress took their orders. "Introductions first. My name is Sarah Connor."
"Ellen Ripley," the other woman said.
"And this is, ah, Arnold," Sarah added, indicating the tall man. Built like a football player, he was, and he had a well-concealed shoulder holster under his business jacket. Mulder had noticed it when they were sitting down at the table.
"At the hospital, you mentioned you had been told to contact us," Scully said.
"Yes. We didn't expect you to be at the hospital, but we would have called you this morning anyway."
"And this is related to the meteor strike last night?" Mulder said.
"It was not meteor," Ripley said coldly. "It was a vessel."
Scully spoke up. "Let me guess. An alien craft from outer space."
"Correct," Arnold said. His voice sounded totally devoid of emotion. "An insertion vehicle."
"Or a disease vector," Ripley added.
Mulder didn't have to look to tell that Scully was rolling her eyes. "You realize that these claims are pretty extraordinary," he said. Might as well do the skeptic bit at first. "We are going to need some proof."
Arnold set one of his hands on the table and reached for a knife. Sarah put a hand on his shoulder. "Not that. Not here." She turned back to Mulder. "All right. See that salt shaker, next table over?"
"Yes, I see it."
"Now, if agent Scully can keep her eyes on the shaker, and agent Mulder can look at me, I can set up a little demonstration. It won't be very dramatic, but…" Sarah clenched her left hand. She had a small silver ring on her index finger, she pointed it at the salt shaker.
Mulder head glass breaking.
"The shaker just shattered," Scully reported. She turned around as the waitress rushed over. "How did you do that? Sonic device?"
"This ring projects kinetic energy over short distances," Sarah explained. "Its impact power is a function of the strength of the wearer."
"That is amazing," Scully commented. "But a weapon, however advanced, is not direct proof of a spaceship."
"It proves that we are not just lunatics," Sarah said tartly. "A paranoid may blab about spaceships and ray-guns, but now I just showed you my ray gun."
"Good point," Mulder said, trying to break the tension. Sarah and Scully were glaring at each other -- it seemed the chemistry between those two wasn't positive. He turned to Ripley. "You said the vessel was also a disease vector. What did you mean by that?"
"It was a plague ship," Ripley said darkly. "It carried alien bioforms. The patients have been infected with them."
"Some reports at the scene spoke of some victims with animals attached to their faces," Mulder said. "Is that what you're talking about?"
Ripley nodded. Her expression was deadly serious. Mulder started to suspect she was intimately familiar with this situation -- former victim, perhaps?
The waitress came over with everyone's order. Arnold drank water; everyone else ate quietly for several minutes, mulling things over.
"We need your help, agent Mulder," Sarah said. "The government is hiding all the evidence of the crash, and all the infected victims. We have some people looking into it, but you have access to sources beyond our own. We have reasons to believe that the alien infestation may cause the death of millions of people."
Mulder looked at Scully. "We are going to look into this. Perhaps you can get in touch with us later today."
Sarah nodded. "We will call you."
"I didn't give you my phone number."
Sarah smiled. "I know. We already have it." The trio rose up. Sarah paid the bill, and left a generous tip. "I did a brief stint as a waitress," she explained. "It's not an easy job."
And then they left, leaving Mulder and Scully to ponder their words.
Chicago County Hospital
6:05 a.m.
One more hour to go in the shift. Mark Greene hoped it would pass without any more surprises.
He did his rounds. Most of the injuries from the meteor strike had been treated and either released or sent up to surgery or intensive care. In the light of the new day, the events of the previous night seemed unthinkable.
There was the small hole in the OR, though. Believable or not, an animal whose secretions could eat through ceramic and concrete had been here.
Trying not to think about it, Mark made his last rounds. He passed an examination room where a large black man was being attended to by Nurse Hathaway. He was a walk-in; according to his story, he had been at the scene of the meteor, and found himself lying on a nearby alley. Carol Hathaway looked skeptical; the man -- a Mr. Jackson, if Mark remembered correctly -- was a known drug user. This could easily be a ploy to get some free meds.
Mark moved over to the next examination room, where a woman with a twisted ankle was about to be released.
"Mark?" That was Carol, an uncertain tone in her voice. Mark hurried over.
Mr. Jackson was convulsing on the examination table.
"His BP is fluctuating wildly!" Carol shouted, trying to hold down the man. Mark rushed to help her. "Massive convulsions and -- " a flailing limb knocked her down.
"Malik!" Mark shouted. The orderly arrived as Carol started to rise from the floor. Mr. Jackson was clutching at his chest. He started to scream hoarsely.
Mark pulled down the hospital gown. "Chest is pale and distended! It…"
The center of the man's chest started to darken. It swelled upwards.
"What the..?"
It burst open. Blood droplets sprayed over Mark's face, making him recoil. A thing, all teeth and fury, emerged from the gory cavity, tearing open Mr. Jackson's flesh and skin like some gruesome chrysalis. Mark and Malik both stepped back in horror; Malik backed into Carol; they both tripped and fell down.
"Oh, my God!"
The creature leaped from the bloody ruin that had been a living man but moments ago. With the speed of a cat, it darted down the hallway. Mark heard screams and the clatter of broken implements as the monster ran through the ER, leaving behind a trail of chaos and shock.
Mark turned to Mr. Jackson. The monitors were all showing flat lines. The creature had shredded most of one lung and part of another, and shattered the man's rib cage on its way out. The man's heart had been chewed through. Nobody could survive such massive trauma.
"Call security," he told Carol, who was gaping at the corpse. "We have to catch it." He ran the way the creature had gone, asking people what they had seen. After a few minutes, one thing was clear. The creature had not left the hospital. It had ran up the stairs to the second floor.
It was somewhere inside the building.
Holiday Inn, Chicago
6:11 a.m.
A shower and a shave had done wonders for Mulder. He stepped out of his hotel room and knocked on Scully's door.
"Come in."
Scully was also looking fresher. She had her laptop on, and the modem plugged in.
"Doing some research?"
"I ran Sarah Connor's name through the computer. I got a match. With a criminal record?"
Mulder's eyebrows rose. "Yes?"
"Possession of drug paraphernalia at age 18. It was a misdemeanor, but her picture is in the files. It looks like her," she continued, turning the screen so Mulder could see the mug shot. "Worked as waitress while going to college, 1982-1983. Married Matthew McCallister in 1983, mother of two children, named Matthew and Sarah -- very original -- and… well, according to the records, she died in a traffic accident in 1991."
"Our Sarah doesn't look like the kind who raises two kids and lives happily in suburbia," Mulder said.
"There are no records on an Ellen Ripley that match the one we met. And 'Arnold' is not a lot of information to go on."
"Well, the name is not familiar, but I remember the face. I was thinking about him, and it finally clicked," Mulder said. "Can you do a check on a Major Alan Schaeffer? He's Army or Delta Force, if I remember correctly."
"All right…" Scully's fingers tapped the keyboard. "I've got it. It's Colonel Alan Schaeffer now; Special Operations Group, five Purple Hearts… here's his picture…" The photo of man in a jungle operations uniform appeared on the screen. He was smiling, and looked tough and determined.
He also looked just like 'Arnold.'
"There is one problem, though," Scully said.
"I think I know what the problem is," Mulder replied. "Colonel Schaeffer is in his fifties."
"He turned fifty-one last April. The man we met looked fifteen or twenty years younger than that."
"I thought so. I remembered the name and the face from an X-File from 1987. An incident in Central America. There were rumors than an extraterrestrial vessel and its pilot were destroyed by a Special Forces unit, operating illegally in the region. Major Schaeffer was the only survivor."
"And now he looks like he hasn't aged a bit since then, goes by the name of Arnold, and is still hunting aliens," Scully finished sarcastically.
"Not the strangest thing we have encountered," Mulder replied. "Although, thinking about the two people in question, another theory comes to mind."
"And that would be..?"
"Here we have two people -- two sets of two people -- identical to each other, but who have apparently led different lives. In the case of this Sarah Connor, we have one person who is dead after living a normal existence, and one who looks like she's lived a very eventful life, and who is alive. And then we have this Major Schaeffer, a young one, and an old one. Are you familiar with the "many worlds" theory, Scully?"
"The quantum mechanics concept that posits many parallel universes, theoretically one for every possible outcome of every possible event?"
"Exactly. Unless we are talking about time travel, I would guess that both Sarah Connor and our alleged Major Schaffer come from an alternate reality."
Scully blinked. "Even for you, Mulder, that's a stretch."
"It's only a guess," Mulder admitted. "We don't have enough information yet. Tomorrow morning, we should visit Dr. Greene and try to learn more."
Mulder's cell phone started ringing. He answered it. "Dr. Greene? We were just talking about you." There was a pause. Mulder's face turned deadly serious. "We'll be right there."
"What's wrong?"
"Dr. Greene things they have another case of infestation. Except this one has caused a fatality."
Duncanville Hotel, Chicago
6:15 a.m.
Ellen Ripley sat back on the hotel chair and tried to relax. It wasn't easy: much of her life had been spent in a state of horror and dread -- in her darker moods, she imagined that, should she ever lead a peaceful life, she would miss the sense of impending doom that always seemed to hang above her like a shadow.
Annalee Call gave her a tentative smile. Having friends helped a lot, but Ripley doubted she would ever come to believe, deep inside her soul, that she could ever relax, or feel safe.
Which suited her for this job just fine.
Across the hotel room, Sarah Connor's eyes met hers. Ripley read concern in her expression, and shrugged with a small grin. Sarah understood Ripley better than anyone else. She knew what it meant to have one's life hanging by a thread, to have a relentless pursuer after her. They had both been through the fire, and survived.
Both of them knew in their bones that death waited behind every corner.
"So far, we have six confirmed cases of infection," Call said, continuing the briefing. "Two at Chicago County Hospital, and four at Chicago Hope. All have been removed by a government agency claiming to be with the CDC."
"And they are full of it," John piped in. "The CDC team arrived two hours ago, and they're being given the mushroom treatment -- you know, keep 'em in the dark and feed them horseshit."
"Typical," Ripley commented. Somebody would try to exploit the aliens. Governments, corporations, or the military, they were all the same. The aliens would fascinate them, entice them, and eventually kill them. Kill them and everyone on Earth.
"Any luck finding where they are taking them?" Sarah asked.
"They are not using any official channels, as far as we can tell," Call replied. "We are monitoring civilian and military facilities, looking for any signs of unusual activity, but that's going to take some time."
"We don't have a lot of time," Ripley said coldly. "The aliens will hatch anywhere from four to twelve hours after infection. We have to assume that at least one of them has already hatched." She paused for a moment. A "hatching" meant the death of some innocent person, as the alien clawed its way out of the victim's body. "After that, they will grow to full size in another four to eight hours. One of the six is a Queen. She will start laying eggs within twenty-four hours. If the bastards in charge provide her with host bodies -- we could be talking about dozens -- hundreds -- in a week or less."
"We'll find 'em," John said confidently. "Right, Arnold?"
"Correct," the cyborg said. Ripley considered the killing machine sharing the room with them. How could Sarah stand working alongside a thing identical to the time-traveling monster that had destroyed her life? On the other hand, how could Ripley stand to look at herself in the mirror, when she had been transformed into a half-human, half-alien hybrid? We become what we fight, she told herself. Was winning worth that price?
You did what you had to. Or you didn't and you died. Sometimes, the answer was that simple.
Lost in thought, she missed the concerned look John Connor gave to his laptop screen. "Uh, guys?" he said. "I just got a transcript from Fox Mulder's telephone. He got a call from Chicago County Hospital. Sounds like a chest-bursting just happened over there."
"Now it's seven aliens," Call said.
"Not for long," Ripley replied grimly.
Chicago County Hospital
6:30 a.m.
The creature had left a blood trail down a corridor, and then had broken into an air vent. It could be anywhere by now.
Mark Greene had discussed evacuating the whole hospital with Dr. Weaver. For the time being, they had called in extra security and were searching for the thing. They had been joined by the zoologist, Professor Harding, who had been in the hospital blissfully consulting with some colleagues over the Internet, unaware of what had been happening for the last few hours. "I am quite sure we have found an entirely new animal species," he told Mark as the two checked a supply closet, armed with improvised nets. "From what you've told me, it acts in a manner similar to some species of wasp -- it paralyzes its victim and plants an egg, or maybe an embryo, inside; the egg then devours the host and emerges from it."
Mark nodded, trying to remain clinically detached. "Something like that. How about the acidic blood?" The blood sample had evaporated before a container that could hold it had been found.
Harrison frowned. "That remains a mystery. Irritating secretions are not unknown -- jellyfish are an example -- but the damage you showed me is extraordinary. I cannot think of any known species with anything like that."
Mark had been thinking about that. The incidents and the meteor crash were clearly linked. A possible explanation suggested itself, but it sounded too fantastic and outlandish for his taste.
Nurse Hathaway walked up to the pair. "The FBI agents are back," she announced. Mark had called them as an act of desperation -- he didn't want to have the smoking man and his goons to come back, and he needed help.
"Very well," he replied. "Let's go meet them."
They left the supply closet, ignorant of the slumbering, growing thing hiding behind a thin partition wall.
Chicago County Hospital
6:35 a.m.
Dr. John Carter had a few free minutes between patients. He took his breaks on the improvised basketball court by the ambulance entrance, shooting hoops. It was something of a tradition among the ER doctors.
His shift would have been over by now, but he had volunteered for a second one. Like Dr. Greene, Carter felt angry and frustrated; working might help where brooding at home would not.
Nobody around the hospital wanted to say what was in everyone's mind. It was too crazy to verbalize.
Fact: a meteor hits Chicago.
Fact: something nobody has ever seen, an animal that defies all classification attempts, attacks several people in the vicinity of the meteor impact.
Fact: government goons show up shortly thereafter, and whisk the victims away using strong-arm tactics out of the wildest militia fantasies.
Carter missed his shot, caught the ball on the rebound. "Aliens," he said. "It's got to be extraterrestrials." Saying it out loud didn't help.
Something heavy landed behind him with a loud thump.
Carter whirled around, clutching the basketball as if it was a weapon.
There was nobody there.
He thought he saw movement out of the corner of his eye, thought he heard an almost subliminal humming sound. He turned, and still saw nothing. Carter's heart was racing; he felt as if he was a kid who was awakened from a deep sleep by a noise underneath his bed.
Nothing was there.
Something was there.
The fire escape stairs on the side of the building rattled, making Carter jump. But there was nothing there.
The wind. It had to be the wind. Carter looked around once again, forced himself to relax. He might have halfway convinced himself to believe in aliens, but he sure as hell wasn't going to start believing in ghosts, too.
Above and behind the young doctor, the Predator continued his climb up the side of the building. He had called for reinforcements, but he was free to act on his own until they arrived.
His quarry was inside.
The hunt was about to begin.