There's not much to say at this point, though when i was wrtiting this it felt like a shorter chapter than the others. Though i did manage to expand it from 4 pages to 5 on Word when i did some editing. Hope it turns out good. Enjoy.

Chapter six

A Town Meeting?

Inside the hospital building Bishop tends to Biggs and Tidus, who lie on beds in one of the med labs. The other marines are not in the room with them, only Yuna, Rikku, Paine and Baird accompany them. Bishop studies Biggs' bleeding waist for a few moments, then, much to Biggs' distress, pulls out a small twin pronged spear, no bigger than his palm, shaped like a 'U' with a metal tail on the end, from just below Biggs' left spare rib, then wraps a band aid on the wound.

Biggs looks at the metal object in Bishops hand, and opens his eyes wide at the vicious looking device. "Bish, what the hell is that?"

"I have no idea, I've never seen anything like it before, it has almost no weight, and analysis of this will have to wait. You got lucky there Biggs, any higher and this would probably have cracked a rib or two and punctured your lung, any lower and it would have hit your left kidney."

Biggs grimaces at the pain "Those bastards are gonna burn nice and slowly when I catch them."

"I wouldn't recommend you go into heavy fighting anytime soon, otherwise you'll make it even worse for you, the wound might even become infected." He looks at Biggs with a serious face; Biggs just looks away with disappointment.

Yuna attends to Tidus who has been shot in his right arm; the single pronged 'tail' of the spear sticks out of his skin whilst the sharp twin pronged end of the spear has embedded itself in his arm.

Bishop, having finished dealing with Biggs walks over to Yuna "Okay Yuna let me deal with this," he studies the wound and the rest of Tidus' arm for a couple of minutes, then looks at the young Blitz star "You got lucky too, the shape of the spear and the angle at which it has struck you has meant that, miraculously enough, your Humerus has fitted, almost like a glove, into the 'U' shape between the two prongs, the bone hasn't been touched, all it needed was a centimeter to the left or right and you'd have a broken arm. Fortunately this is nothing you shouldn't fully recover from in a couple of months, now, I'm going to have to pull this out alright?"

"If you must." He grimaces.

Bishop starts to carefully pull out the spear, making Tidus growl and breathe through his teeth making hissing sounds, his face twisted with pain. After a minute of gentle pulling, Bishop frees the spear from his arm and wraps a bandage around Tidus' arm.

Yuna places a comforting hand on his face and gives him little smile, "Are you going to be okay?"

It's not everyday I get shot with a spear, but I'll deal with it." He smiles back

"Good man," says Bishop "Biggs?"

"I'll be fine; this isn't the first time I've been shot with something."

Baird walks towards the four with a serious look on his face "Are you guys ready to move now? The locating computer is down the hall and through the specimen labs; we'll head there once the others return."

"Yeah I'm good to go sir" says Biggs, Tidus simply nods and gets off of the bed.

Vasquez enters the room and salutes Baird "All doors into the building are now welded shut sir. The other guys are making a more thorough check of the building, nothing is getting in here and if there is anything inside, it isn't getting out. They said that they'll be finished in a few minutes and will meet us here."

"Good at least we are secure from those things for now.

"They definitely weren't human alright? I saw the one I shot, its blood was fluorescent green! Not only that but when I did shoot it, it started to… de-cloak, and it had these crazy electrical bolts flashing over its body. I aint seen no human or fiend that ever looked like that."

Bishop nods "I saw it too, these things can't be fiends, they're too intelligent, and there is nothing in Spira that can shoot things like these," He says, pointing at the two spears. "The craftsmanship of these things is incredibly precise, I can't think of anything we have on this planet that can carve something out of metal with this degree of accuracy, it's incredibly sharp."

Footsteps start echoing down the hallway and Lucil and Beclem's squads enter the room.

Vasquez continues where Bishop left off. "I couldn't see exactly where they were shooting from; either they must have been pretty far away from us or their camouflage is better than we thought."

"Cowards, doing a bit of sniping work on us." Grumbles Maddox

"Hey!" Said Frost indignantly.

"Sorry man."

"Okay," says Baird, taking command of the situation "If you guys are ready we better start locating these civvies and fast, the longer we wait, the less a chance there is of finding them alive, let's get to the communications room, we'll need to go through the specimen labs first, Vasquez you have point."

The group exit the med lab and march on down the hall with Vasquez up front and Beclem to her left, frequently checking his motion tracker; after what had happened back in the previous building, they are not taking any chances.

Like the previous building, the corridors of the hospital are not particularly bright or welcoming, either through lack of power being supplied to the building, or simply a flaw in the design of the structure, either way though, the place was eerie, almost threatening, and there is no doubt in the minds of the soldiers that the situation in which they have managed to find themselves in; being hunted by strange entities, is not helping to shake off this feeling. They reach a door with a sign above it that read 'Specimen Lab' in bold red letters, on a white glowing background.

Beclem presses a few buttons and the door opens, they all step inside and find themselves in a well lit room that is separated into two halves by a large, thick pane of glass and a control operated door. Inside the opposite half are a bed, desks, a few chairs and two rows of three, cylindrical tubes, two of which contain strange spider like organisms. Unbeknownst to the marines, the creatures in the tubes are identical to the organism that had attached itself to John, only these ones are not moving.

Vasquez is the first to enter the room and blinks in surprise at the bizarre animals. "What the heck are those things?"

"Damn those are ugly." Mutters Nadine.

"Got that right." Replies Frost.

The group moves into the room and surround the tubes, except Stone who steps cautiously towards on of the tubes, taking a closer look at the apparently dead creature. Suddenly the animal bursts to life and tries to jump at him through the liquid but is stopped by the glass, but still makes Stone jump back and everyone else laugh. The creature thrashes its tail in the tube, clearly agitated and desperate to get at Stone. Stone himself looks at the creature, slightly disgusted as a fleshy tongue-like tube comes out from what could at best be described as the creature's mouth, and tries again to get through the glass but with no luck. Othello steps close to Stone, smiling.

"Looks like love at first site to me." This draws a snigger from everyone else and a sarcastic smile from Stone. Bishop meanwhile studies a file he has found on the desk,

Baird step over to him "What have you got for us Bishop?"

"One's alive obviously, the other is dead. Apparently the dead one was found, and I quote from the report, 'attached to the face of site topographer John Riker's face, its tail was wrapped around his neck. According to his investigative partner Elsa Mitchell, the tail appeared to tighten its grip around his neck when the creature was touched. When he was returned here the doctors tried to surgically remove it by cutting off its tail, but when they went to make an incision its 'sickly green blood' spurted out onto the table, the floor and the scalpel that had made the cut. Instantly upon contact the liquid began to eat away extremely quickly at the scalpel, the operating table and the floor. After a certain period of time and having eaten its way through several levels below the operating room, the liquid slowed down and eventually stopped. Analysts concluded that its blood was a molecular acid that oxidizes when in contact with the air, gradually neutralizing it. After that incident the doctors stopped surgery and put him into quarantine, after 6 hours of containment, the creature, all by itself came off and died after approximately two minutes. An hour or so later John was awake, if a little woozy, but quickly recovered. After a couple of hours and some examinations he was cleared to go. Ten hours after the creature detached itself from him, John was eating dinner with a number of others, when he started convulsing, choking and clutching his chest. He started to go into what looked like seizures and a number of people needed to restrain him, all the while he was yelling in obvious agony. After approximately thirty seconds after the convulsions started, the center of his chest started bleeding, and an odd, faint crunching noise was heard. Then his rib cage apparently burst open, his shirt along with it, blood went everywhere and this snake like creature came out of his chest. The doctor who was there at the time stopped anyone from touching it for fear of contamination. This apparently gave it the opportunity to escape; they never saw the creature after that and the entire base was put on maximum alert, but the animal was never found. According to Elsa the cave that was discovered some distance from here, contained hundreds of these eggs and in each one of these eggs resided one of these 'face huggers', apparently during a preliminary investigation of the cave, John got close to one of the eggs, it hatched and this thing attached itself to his face. When he was brought back here, the resident authorities decided to send another team to obtain a specimen. They succeeded after a bit of a struggle with one of them and brought it here, they tried to sedate it but the syringes kept melting, it seems that their blood is highly pressurized so that if they are wounded their attacker would get covered in acid, after several attempts to sedate it they gave up and put it in this store. The doctor then writes here that he intends to autopsy the dead one. But that last entry about wanting to do the autopsy is the last one, it seems he never got a chance to do it."

Baird looks at the doctor with concern, knowing they have clearly stumbled on something greater than just the hunters that wait outside for them; a new mystery was beginning to unfold. "Well it seems obvious that whatever that 'facehugger' is, it is obviously designed to grab onto the face of its victim, keep the person alive for so long, during which it lays some sort of egg or embryo in the chest of that person then once it has accomplished that, it dies as it has fulfilled its purpose in finding a host for the embryo, then the embryo develops into that… that… 'chestburster' thing." He looks at Bishop who nods in agreement.

"Well that all makes sense, but to what end? That 'chestburster' as you called it must do more than just slither around, otherwise its existence is pointless; something that size wouldn't stand much of a chance against the fiends that exist in Spira, even with that acid blood, such a species would have been wiped out before long, there must be something more to it than that.

"Well whatever that snake was there's no way it could possibly have taken all of the people here; it must have been those things we saw out there." says Yuna.

Baird nods "I agree, but let's stay sharp for any of these things that might have decided to hang around; we never know, there might be more of them, let's get to the computer room."

The group resumes their movement to the computer room; they exit the specimen holding area of the room and go through a door on their left. The room they enter contains computer terminals, most of which are still active and cover the majority of the walls. In the center of the room is a computer terminal similar to the one the group had looked at in the previous building, they give the room a quick look over, then gather round the large, horizontal screen.

"Othello, start a search for any human life signs." Orders Baird, Othello opens up a panel below the screen and attaches a few wires to his little hand held computer and works his magic. The computer screen starts scanning the Macalania area. The map on the screen looks more like a diagram of the area, as opposed to a proper map. The screen suddenly flashes a few times and makes a beeping noise, Othello cuts the noise and everyone looks at the screen. The map shows two large buildings, one of which shows an accumulation of white dots that flash regularly.

"Alright here we go, that's quite a few survivors there, I don't know how many, though I'm pretty certain that that's not all of them, there were hundreds working in this city, but at least it's a start." Says Baird

"They all seem to be in sub level 3 of the reactor control station, I wonder what they're doing down there?" ponders Nadine

"Looks like a damn town meeting down there." remarks Maddox.

"Well there are a lot of survivors down there; we'd better not hang around here, I suggest we get over there using the APC seeing as there is about three hundred metres of open area, if we go on foot we will be sitting ducks for those… things. I suggest we go by the back entrance as well; there are fewer advantageous firing positions for them to take. Frost, you can remote pilot the APC to this exit here, right?"

"I can, just give me a moment to set up the receiver and the remote controls."

Frost takes off his back pack and goes about his task; he sets up an aerial and connects it to a small computer, which has several directional buttons on the keyboard. As he does this, Tidus walks up to him.

"How does this work?"

Well, inside this little computer here is a small remote device that once activated, automatically directs itself into a computer relay that is constantly turned on, inside the APC, once the link is made I can control the APC from a distance of up to 30 kilometers away. This little monitor here is linked up to a high resolution video camera in the front of the APC, so I can see where I'm steering."

"Cool." Murmurs an impressed Tidus

"That is an excellent word to describe it." He stands up and grabs the attention of Baird, "Okay its set up and ready to roll."

"Do it, Frost"

Frost obeys and places the computer on the glowing map, touches a green button on the computer keyboard and a red sentence on the computer screen lights up saying 'APC engine activated' Frost starts to use the arrow keys on the computer keyboard to steer the APC, the little computer screen shows the front of the APC moving in accordance to Frost's use of the directional arrows in the center of the key board. He skillfully steers it until he sees that he has guided it almost perfectly inline with the back entrance of the hospital.

He gives a small accomplished smile "Okay APC is in place, let's move before those things get out there and wait for us."

"You heard the man let's move out, Vasquez you have point." Barks Baird.

The group proceeds out of the room and heads swiftly down the dark hall, their intended exit lay about 50 metres away.

Vasquez glances over to Beclem, who has his tracker held out in front of him "Talk to me Beclem."

"I'm seeing all clear, let's just keep moving."

They reach the exit and Maddox stands next to Vasquez, their ludicrously powerful guns aimed at the door, which had recently been welded shut.

"Othello, use a plasma welding torch to reopen that door." Orders Baird, Othello moves towards the door and gets out a small, hand held device that resembles a small gun, he presses it to the top of where the two parts of the door meet and presses the 'trigger'. Instantly sparks fly out from where the torch makes contact with the metal and a fierce hissing noise echoes in the corridor, Othello works his way from the top to the bottom with surprising speed, showing off the effectiveness of the plasma welder. He reaches the bottom and steps over to the control panel, he presses a few buttons and the door opens, revealing only the side door of the APC and bad weather.

"Alright, Vasquez and Maddox go open the APC, the rest of you stay here, once they open it and get inside, you run like hell you understand?"

"Yes sir." Comes the hushed reply from everyone.

Vasquez takes a deep breath and then makes a dash for the APC, quickly followed up by Maddox, nothing happens to them, no shots are fired, no blades are drawn, there is just the sound of the wind and pitter patter of the rain, but that doesn't slow the two gunners down, Vasquez proceeds to open the APC's door as Maddox points his Smartgun in every conceivable direction, ready to open up on anything that it picks up. Vasquez unlocks the door, slides it open and jumps inside, Maddox quickly follows suite. Seeing the two soldiers get inside everyone else dashes outside, their guns sweeping the area as they go, ready for their stalkers, should they decide to make an appearance, but still nothing. They jump inside and Tidus, the last one in, shuts the door with a slam and they all take the seats that they had sat in during the flight into the city, Baird guns the engine and they drive off towards the control complex of the reactor.