'You wanna go back and get him? Do you wanna get killed?!' Hicks was shouting in her face, trying desperately to make her see reason.
Call simply looked back at him, pulling half-heartedly away from his grasp. He was right. Velko's dead. And now we're all going to die too. She shook her head, no. 'There's a chance he might be alive! And I'm not letting that go!'
'Call. He has the timer, he has the device. He's dead now...and with him went any chance we have of blowing up this place!' He looked around nervously, expecting one of those things to drop straight in the midst of them. 'We need to leave – do you get that?'
'I understand.' she answered. Call was feeling calmer now, more rational. 'But I can't do what you're asking me to. And there's no chance in hell I'm going to let you leave on that ship without knowing for sure if he's dead or not.'
Hicks was just about retort, when he caught himself. If that were Hudson, or Vasquez, or anyone else for that matter...he would have gone back – he wouldn't want to leave them behind. But this situation is different, he kept telling himself. If Velko is being cocooned, he's as good as dead. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to reason between logic and his feelings. And his feelings were very strong.
'Alright.' he conceded. Then he looked at Ripley and Vasquez in turn, questioning them with his eyes.
Ripley nodded in agreement. Vasquez's eyes looked steeled with determination. 'I'm all for it, man. But we're wasting time here talking while those bastards are probably hunting us down right now.'
'Which way...? asked Ripley, looking around, wondering where they would have to start their search.
'Lowest level.' answered Call. Knowing that that was probably where the main hive was. Where the Queen would be.
Even Vasquez breathed out heavily, reluctantly allowing an expression of intense worry to cross her face for a brief moment. She'd been down there before. She had seen bodies stripped up to those black walls like pieces of meat hung in a slaughter house. Vasquez gripped her weapon tightly. They had come this far. Now was not the time to get cold feet. And she had a personal score to settle with those creatures.
'Then what're we waiting for? Let's go.' she said, frustrated with herself for losing her cool.
'Wait,' said Call suddenly, grasping Vasquez's arm. 'Don't you think it's strange how they suddenly stopped attacking us? I mean, there were tons of them crawling up here to get us...'
'They're scared, man...once we let out a couple shots in their direction, they back off.' reasoned Vasquez. She pulled her hand away and then looked back at Call, her impatience showing through her eyes.
'You're right...' said Ripley as if something was dawning on her. 'They just stopped coming. But it's not the guns that did it...I think they're waiting for us to come down there...'
'...And if we do, we're gonna get caught like mice in a heck of a rat trap.' finished Hicks.
'You mean they're thinking? They got a plan?' asked Vasquez.
'Looks like it.' replied Hicks. 'But if we take too long, they're gonna get tired of waiting. Follow me.' He said, as if he'd made up his mind about something. He walked away from the main stairs and continued walking along the platform that ran along the inner side of the tower.
'Where are you going?' Call stepped alongside him.
'If the tower's still under construction, they're bound to have an alternate set of emergency stairs somewhere else.' explained Ripley from behind, catching on.
They walked quietly, trying to tread softly on the metal walkway when it branched out in three separate directions. The one ahead of them lead to two service elevators and a built in ladder, which ran along a constructed hole in each of the floor levels. Hicks walked up to one of the lifts and pressed a button. The four of them looked up in silence as they saw the lift descend through its caged wall. Once it reached their floor, they went inside.
'Going down.' said Hicks as he pushed the B4 button.
To hell, thought Ripley.
* * *
The thick metal doors slid open, revealing nothing much except for a short hallway lit up dimly by fluorescent lights. At the end of the hallway, the four of them could not discern anything. Hicks wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand before proceeding with his laser blaster pointed straight ahead of him. Vasquez still held on to her pulse rifle while her side-arm was tucked neatly into her holster by her hip. Call walked backwards, covering them should anything try to sneak up from behind. Ripley remained in the middle holding her blaster so tight that her knuckles turned white. She knew full well that should anything happen to them, this sole piece of machinery would be the only thing that stood between her and death.
Ripley felt her skin prickle as they emerged from the hallway, and it made her feel very cold. She had been down this road before. All her repressed memories came flooding back as she recalled the wailing klaxons as she stumbled through the narrow hallways on board the Nostromo. The exhaust vents letting out sudden gushes of steam preventing her from seeing even five feet ahead of her...all that noise and fear...the realization that each step she had taken could have been her last. Not knowing and waiting. Not knowing when you were going to die and waiting for something out of your worst nightmares to come and end it all so painfully.
And it was happening all over again.
Hicks looked behind him, glimpsing Ripley's face contort in agony as she relived the trauma that she'd felt before. He caught her eye and gave her a meaningful look. He wanted to say that if everything did go to hell, and there was no way out, he'd do his best to make sure that they would all die as painlessly as possible. She gave a single, slight nod and it looked as though she understood.
He looked away and stared in dreaded fascination as the smooth metal walls gradually became thicker and more uneven – they were coated in some sort of viscous substance that had hardened – as they walked along the narrow corridor. Two minutes later they all noted that any trace of human tools of construction were absent – the corridors themselves had turned into curved, black tunnels with that same oozing material sliding down its walls. There was a poor amount of light – each of them had to blink and squint several times over to discern objects around them.
'Need some light...?' whispered Vasquez as she began to reach for her flashlight.
'No,' replied Hicks. 'Don't want them to see us.'
Ripley leaned forward and spoke to Hicks and Vasquez softly. 'How are we going to find him in this maze?'
'Where would you hide if you were trying not to get killed?' spoke Vasquez.
'I wouldn't hide. I would look for a way out.'
'We would've seen him if he's trying to get to the lifts this way...' said Vasquez.
'He doesn't know the lifts are in this direction.' said Hicks.
'So he's wandering around this place like a lost ant in the wrong hive.'
'We're assuming he's still alive...' said Hicks.
Call said nothing as she overheard their conversation. She did not want to join in. Velko, if you're still alive...let us know. Please let us know, she spoke loudly in her mind.
'So are we gonna go around in circles too?' asked Vasquez.
'I know where I'm going,' replied Hicks. 'We're walking towards the main stairs. If he tries to use either one of these exits, we'll see him.'
'And if we don't...?' questioned Ripley.
'Then we leave.' answered a voice from behind them. It was Call. There was no point in risking all their lives to save one individual with the added uncertainty of not knowing whether he was still alive. Her feelings tore at her, but she would deal with them later. If there were another way off the planet, she would have stayed behind to get Velko back. But that wasn't their situation. Call kept telling herself that what she was doing was logical. But then why did it feel so wrong?
No one replied. Each of them knew what it meant to leave someone behind. Because it could just as easily have been one of them instead.
* * *
They had been walking for two minutes in complete silence, looking around for any sign of Velko. A torn bag pack, clothes...anything. But there was nothing they could see. Call started thinking about how he had decided to follow her off the Amadeus and had sneaked off the ship unnoticed. Just one small decision was all it took to change the course of his life. Just one. And he was just a kid, he had said that he had only been in one serious combat situation before, it was – Call blinked suddenly as something caught her eye. She looked ahead of her, down the tunnel they had walked down minutes before. The walls were moving.
'Run like hell...' she said, not realizing that her voice was barely audible.
The others turned around to face her, when she stopped walking backwards, spun around and shouted. 'Make for the stairs! GO!'
They required no explanation and started running while hearing shots being fired from behind them as Call tried to buy them some time. They ran in single file, when suddenly Hicks – who was in the lead – came to a skidding halt. The tunnel widened into a large space that was illuminated by a dull red glow. Hicks looked around slowly towards the light source which was a blast furnace of some sort – probably for waste disposal purposes, he thought numbly. Alongside the railings that enclosed the furnace he noticed several aliens – some still clinging onto the walls whilst some stood in plain sight...waiting.
'The bastards...' spoke Vasquez in a low tone.
Ripley opened fire first on the nearest creature and didn't wait to watch it fall dead as she took aim at another. Vasquez and Hicks followed her lead while they created a small circular perimeter, fighting back to back against something each of them knew would overcome them sooner or later.
'Try to get to the stairs!' shouted Ripley, trying to offer some hope as the black masses crept growing nearer and nearer. She could see their dreadfully familiar faces again, and she felt the old fear intensify so much that she thought she would die before they got to her. She hated the sight of their elongated heads, their cold teeth bared and ready. And they looked like unearthly demons as they advanced, bathed in the red glow of the furnace. Then she remembered what they did to Dallas. And Lambert, Brett and Parker...and Newt's family. Her eyes burned angrily with tears. She kept pulling the trigger, determined that she would take as many of them as she could down with her.
'Where the hell is Call?!' shouted Hicks as he glanced around them.
No one answered. Everything was going crazy again...nothing else mattered except survival.
Vasquez yelled out in both pain and anger as some acid sprayed against her leg, and immediately began to eat through her armor. Hicks slammed in another cartridge of ammunition into his pulse rifle, letting out short rapid bursts of fire – trying to conserve ammo, all the while moving slowly with his other two companions towards the stairs. Ripley felt her body grow colder as her blaster grew warmer with each shot she fired.
It wouldn't be long now.
* * *
Call had remained behind for a few seconds while the others ran ahead, firing at anything that moved. Her movements were precise, calculated. Even her aim was spot on target. But she began to worry as her weapon started to overheat, and started moving backwards slowly. And it seemed as if this was exactly what the aliens had anticipated. They stopped holding back, and crept forward at a slightly faster pace. Call was just about to turn around and run when something yanked her – seemingly into the wall on her right – and she gasped, ready to let out a string of successive shots at whatever it was that was holding her.
'-me! It's me!' said the voice.
She looked up at Velko's face. Blood was running down his left cheek and his wrist looked pretty mangled, but other than that, he seemed alright. She closed her eyes and breathed out. He didn't give her time to recover, he grabbed her arm as they both started running down yet another tunnel to what they both hoped would be safety.
'The timer's dead. I fell...and it's broken,' he panted as they both ran.
She looked at him and noticed that he still had his bag pack strapped to his back. A spasm of hope shot through her. 'But you still have the nitro-bomb?'
'It's useless without the timer...we need the computer inside the timer to set the damn thing off...'
They reached a tight corner and Velko turned left. Call followed at his side as he continued to talk. 'Call, I've seen her...the Queen, she's huge, she lays the eggs...'
'Did she see you?' asked Call. He nodded, but said nothing as she looked at him incredulously. 'And you're still alive?'
'They were gonna kill me...Jesus, they were everywhere...' he stopped running, trying to pull himself together. 'But I had the bomb in my hand, I wanted to set it off then and there. I didn't want to die having one of those things inside of me,' he shut his eyes as Call placed a reassuring hand on his shoulder. 'Then I saw that the stupid computer timer was smashed in. I looked up, expecting one of those things to leap onto me any second...but they didn't. They stopped coming towards me. I dunno what...what was going on, I think they knew what I was trying to do. But they didn't know I couldn't do it. So I held the nitro pack up...I wanted to show them...and I walked outta there. I'm still alive.'
Call looked at him with sympathetic eyes. He was still trying to come to grips with this fact. That they hadn't killed him... She immediately looked back up at him, and he caught this sudden change in expression. 'Can you take me to where she is?' she asked.
'I want to leave.' he said, shaking his head repeatedly. 'Please say we don't have to go back there.'
'We can't let the others die. If we can control the Queen, then we can control the entire colony. She can make her soldiers back off.' She looked him straight in the eye. 'I know you don't want Ripley and the others to die and I know you're afraid.' She nodded in the direction ahead of them. 'Show me the way, Sebastian. You have to trust me on this, okay?'
He nodded, and wiped the dried blood off the edge of his eyes wearily. 'I trust you, Call. I trust you.'
* * *
She walked alongside him as he led her to the center of the nest. They passed one or two dead bodies – human, mangled, still strapped in place by the hardened substance they had observed earlier. Their now-pale faces had contorted into masks of agony and it was all Call could do to stick to her task without breaking down into tears of fear, anger and sadness. It would all end soon. It's going to be over, she kept telling herself. She knew – from the minute that Velko had told her about his narrow escape – what she had to do. It was all too evident. Isn't there some other way? There must be some other way... No, Call. There isn't. Search yourself – you know this to be true. So help me God, this is what I have to do...please help me to be strong...
Her stride grew heavy as the realization of what she would do grew on her, weighing her down. Her feelings were swirling around her head in a tumult, making her dizzy. A tearing emotion, like a knife through her soul, wanted to make her cry out. Something caught in her throat as she choked back tears. But there wasn't time for this. She must be who she was made to be. The android. The artificial person programmed to function by responding to logic. And the situation had presented itself to her in its most obvious form. Here it was. The chance to save her friends and a chance to save the future, sitting in the palm of her hand. If she threw it away now, she'd never forgive herself.
Telling herself that she had a choice was a lie. So what else was there for her to do?
AUTHOR'S NOTE (27/02/04):
Thanks to Anise for pointing out to me the thing about the nuke...I actually had addressed that fact before in one of my chapters (10 or 11 – I can't remember which), but I forgot to carry it through. Discrepancies like that annoy me too.
Sorry for the long wait...have a lot of work flinging itself at me, but I'm going to try my best to keep up – because I really do enjoy writing, and I'm determined to complete at least one story.
Again, thanks for all your reviews – they're both encouraging and helpful.
P.S. Well, this is interesting: I can see that I got reviews, but I can't read 'em. L