A/N: I hope you guys like Traeten and Professor Walsh- well, one's a corporate slimeball and the other's a mad scientist, so I can't expect that. But this chapter consists almost completely of dialogue between them, so you'll have to bear with them in return for finally getting answers about what's been going on in Sunnydale since the meteor landed.

"And then of course came the mandatory gloating, where Traeten said they'd made it look like an alien had taken me, and that when you came to rescue me, you'd be heading smack into the aliens' Hive. Whatever that is."

The Scoobies had gone back to Giles' home to talk about what happened and for a cup of post-rescueage tea. Willow was feeling much better, and was telling them about her brief captivity.

"It sounds like the aliens' home, their nest in Sunnydale," Giles said. "Doubtless it's located somewhere in the tunnels you and Riley explored previously, Buffy. If I'm correct about Hostile 100 being like the Queen in an ant colony, it will undoubtedly need a safe and hidden place to reproduce, and to hold the… incubators… for its children. It's undoubtedly well-defended. A clever tactic of his, trying to get us to charge in there and have the Xenomorphs do his work for him."

"Good thing you saw through it, Giles." Xander said. "Otherwise we'd probably all be having real close encounters right about now."

"Well... yes," he said, cleaning his glasses. "But in retrospect, it was a rather slipshod operation. Did they really expect us not to notice the disks?"

Willow nodded. So much for him treating us like grownups, she thought. She realized that while Traeten might have been smart enough to take all their abilities into account in his plans, he had no true respect for them as people, let alone as intelligent ones. One of the drawbacks of treating everyone like a tool, I guess.

"That's not all," said Xander. "Our slick-suited friend has been a very busy boy with the folks his company works with."

"You mean the Initiative?" asked Willow.

Buffy nodded. "They found what's been causing all the weird power outages there. Looks like Traeten planted some kind of sabotage gizmo a while back, and was using it to mess with the Initiative's systems."

Willow furrowed her brow. "But... that means the power failure that let out Hostile 100..."

"Looks like it," said Buffy. "I don't know why either."

"It's a good question," Xander said. "If I'm the kind of guy who lives, eats, sleeps and breathes for the bottom line, where's the profit for me in letting a giant, homicidal alien loose to trash my customer's place and terrorize the town?"

"I believe the Initiative is asking Traeten exactly that question right about now," said Giles. "I daresay it won't be in a very pleasant manner."

"Yeah," said Willow. There was a pause. "I'm not feeling any sympathy. Is there anything wrong with that?"

They all shook their heads.

"Is it just me, or were you expecting this to be less pleasant?" Riley asked Forrest as they walked away from the Initiative cell where Jacob Traeten now sat strapped to a chair, hooked by IV tube to a potent concoction of drugs.

"I was personally hoping for something involving electricity and exploratory surgery, but I guess the Professor knows best. We do need this guy's information," Forrest said. He turned around. "Professor, you sure you don't want any help in there?" he called.

Walsh, sitting across from Traeten, shook her head. Riley and Forrest shrugged and kept walking, and she waited until they were out of sight before beginning the interrogation. All surveillance systems in this part of the Initiative had been shut off. She and Traeten were completely alone. The drugs being dripped into his bloodstream, combined with his recent concussion, had not been kind to him. Traeten was sweating and his head drooped, mouth open and eyes glazed. To make things worse for him, his immaculate suit had been taken from him, and he faced Professor Walsh in his underclothes. Hurt, confused, stripped of his dignity, Walsh was sure he was in no condition to offer any resistance. She leaned forward.

"Mr. Traeten," she said. "Mr. Traeten, can you hear me?"

There was a barely audible sound from Traeten which might have been an inhalation, or a simple groan. She opened her mouth to speak again, but-

"Yes." He spoke with surprising clarity, voice apparently unaffected by the drugs. "Yes I can hear you." Slowly, by millimetres, he raised his head. Walsh looked into his eyes and saw that though they were unfocused, the keen mind behind them was still at least partially working. She hoped he was incapacitated enough to not lie.

"Do you remember what happened?" she asked.

"Yes," he said. "The Initiative and your civilian acquaintances attacked my company's facility."

"That's right. We know that you've been sabotaging the Initiative. We know that you kidnapped a civilian and tried to murder her."

"Please, Professor. There's been a misunderstanding. You know how much we value our relationship with our Initiative customers..." Traeten's voice trailed off as Walsh, frustrated, reached for the IV and increased the flow of drugs into his body. That he could keep up this charade in these circumstances was nothing short of astounding. It was probably sheer habit, coupled with fear. A company like Ravnon probably had very strict confidentiality contracts. She waited a few minutes before trying again.

Reaching under her chair, she brought up the device that had been found and held it in front of his face. "Do you recognize this?" she said slowly.

Traeten's eyes were now almost closed, his head tilted back, but the voice, the voice that was Traeten's livelihood, his existence, the voice was still strong and clear. "That is a P3X-888 Covert Electronic Warfare and Surveillance Device, developed for sale to the black-ops division of the CIA. It is capable-"

"I've seen what it's capable of," Walsh cut in sharply. "You planted it in the Initiative. Why?"

"I-" Traeten's mouth snapped shut abruptly. His eyes rolled into his head and he went limp with a moan.

"Mr. Traeten." Walsh's voice was beyond frigid. "I know that you're not unconscious, so why don't you just raise your head up and answer my questions? If I were you, I wouldn't be worrying about dishonouring any parts of Ravnon's confidentiality clauses. Your company is finished, Traeten. The United States Government was your only customer, and it is now most upset with you. Ravnon's assets all over the world are being seized as we speak. Your company will be bankrupt within the month, along with any employees that have not been taken into custody by that time. Do you understand?"

Traeten mumbled something. Walsh leaned in closer. It came again.

"We'll sue."

Professor Walsh's mouth dropped wide open. "Excuse me?"

"You assaulted a private enterprise with nothing but circumstantial evidence..." Traeten trailed off as his voice weakened. He drew a shuddering breath, and continued: "and the word of a tabloid, passed on by a civilian computer hacker who-"

"Shut up."

Traeten stopped talking, looked at Walsh. Her face was tense yet expressionless, trying desperately to remain in control, reminding herself that Traeten couldn't talk if he was dead. "I was expecting nonsense and lies from you, Mr. Traeten, but of a higher quality than this. I have to say, I'm a little disappointed." She shook her head in disgust. "You and I know that both Ravnon and the Initiative are completely secret entities. Neither of us even officially exist, and there is no legal recourse for or against something that doesn't exist. You certainly can't sue us-" Walsh snorted at the suggestion that her organization was vulnerable to something as trivial as civic law.

Traeten managed a sickly smile. "Ordinarily, this would be true. However, I think you'll find that our law firm is highly specialized, especially in... unique situations like these. I assure you, they can take and win any case."

"Ah." Walsh regarded him blankly. "No doubt the best lawyers money can buy."

"Oh, yes. We spared no expense."

"The best lawyers your soon-to-be-bankrupt company can buy and somehow pay-"

Walsh stopped talking, taken aback at the look of sheer horror that fleeted over Traeten's face at the thought of Ravnon not being able to pay its legal fees. She wondered exactly what sort of lawyers the shadowy company had.

A sigh rushed out of Traeten as the fight abruptly left him. Walsh seized her advantage. "When did you plant the device?"

No alibi. No company. No lawyers. No lies. No suit. Nothing. Traeten didn't even hesitate. "When we first started working with you. It was a contingency plan in case our... consumer relations with the Initiative soured."

"And you used it to break out Hostile 100," Walsh said. "Why? Why on Earth?"

"It's a long story."

"Going back to Mongolia."

"Exactly." Traeten sighed. "Could you turn this off?" he motioned weakly at the IV bag, pulsing as its drugs flowed into his body. "I can't concentrate with this... stuff in me..."

Walsh looked at him closely and carefully, then nodded, put the P3X-888 back on the floor, and then reached for the IV system and opened a valve all the way. Traeten's eyes went wide as a potent mixture flooded his system.

"What..." Traeten cleared his throat, regained his composure. "What was that?"

"Feeling better?" Walsh asked.

"Yes... I didn't know there were antidotes to truth serums."

"The Initiative has devoted a great deal of effort researching ways to affect the physiology of humanoid creatures, as you well know," Walsh said. "I don't want you immobilized, Mr. Traeten. We may still have use for you." She smiled very unpleasantly. "Now what happened in Mongolia?"

Traeten took a moment to wonder what use the Initiative could still have for him, decided that was a train of though best left unpursued, and then leaned back, remembering. "I was a junior executive at the time, serving as the liaison between the Exploratory Expeditions Corporation and Ravnon." He looked at Walsh. "You know by now that EEC is one of our front companies, right?"

"Yes."

He nodded and continued. "I was accompanying a five-man mission to the desert in Mongolia. They were looking for mineral deposits and I was there to make sure they reported whatever they found to their parent company. On our third night out, we saw a light in the sky. We thought it was a huge shooting star at first... until the sonic boom. It landed a few miles away from our camp.

"A meteorite?"

Traeten smiled. "Yes. Exactly like the one that landed here. We were very interested in it; rare and valuable minerals have been found in meteorites before. I went with one of the EEC men, MacReady, in a Jeep to take a look."

"And found it was an egg," Walsh said.

"Not right away," Traeten said. "It was so strange-looking that we didn't know what to make of it, and we couldn't get a close look at it because it was still incredibly hot from re-entry. We took it back to the camp, and decided to let it cool off for a while before trying to study it."

Walsh tapped her foot, thinking. "Did you find anything like the heat shield Sunnydale's egg arrived in?

"Yes," said Traeten. "After the evacuation, a team sent to the impact site found similar fragments. We've been testing them ever since, and wherever they come from and whatever they're made of, it's an incredible heat insulator. The egg itself becomes extremely hot, but thanks to the shield, the organism inside survives, but remains dormant for several hours. We think that after landing, the egg is still too hot to become active and allow the creature to emerge."

"For the egg to become active?" asked Walsh.

"Yes. The egg is an organism in itself. It draws moisture from the environment, regulates temperature, does everything it can to keep the prelarval creature inside alive. The material it's made of is extremely tough. We don't know what, if anything, it uses for yolk, but it looks like the egg could maintain the Xenomorph for a very, very long time. But that's not the most remarkable thing."

"Oh?"

"We think the eggs are pressure-sensitive. An organism touching one causes it to hatch. That's what happened to Mandrake," Traeten said.

"He was impregnated by the alien?"

"Yes. We'd already realized it was organic before it happened, and were all very excited. This was the biggest thing EEC had ever found, the biggest thing anyone had ever found... Life from beyond Earth. We all realized the enormous profit potential. That's why I wasn't there when it happened. I was contacting my superiors, helping them get our claim to ownership of the object airtight." Traeten seemed to have recovered completely from the drugging by now, and Walsh was pleased that her counter-serum had worked so well.

"You were afraid EEC would try to take it?" she asked.

"No, no. EEC is Ravnon," Traeten clarified. "What little separation there is between the two is only for the needs of secrecy. However, EEC is made up of very... enterprising individuals, with a healthy sense of opportunism. One of my main reasons for being there was to remind them who writes their checks. There was also the chance the Mongolian government would try something if they discovered it, since it landed in their territory. We went through a lot of trouble to keep that from happening. We had no idea that it was the least of our worries..."

"When did the egg become active?" Walsh asked.

"A few hours after we brought it back. Mandrake was trying to take tissue samples from it, which must have triggered the hatching. I was talking to my superiors, and suddenly heard screaming and yelling. When I got there, Mandrake was unconscious and the creature was latched onto his face."

"Interesting," Walsh observed dispassionately. "Mr. Giles was asleep when the egg in his home hatched."

"I've been wondering about that myself," admitted Traeten. "It may be that the eggs even have a basic memory of the last time they were touched. There's no way to be sure. Anyway, we were all a little... upset after what happened to Mandrake. We informed Ravnon, of course, but no one else. We were still hoping to keep the alien secret. My superiors said they'd send a chopper to extract Mandrake and the egg, and that we should stay put until then."

Traeten continued. "It was a mineral expedition, so we had almost no medical equipment. All we could do was make Mandrake comfortable and observe him closely. There were several attempts at removing the creature by force, but it had attached itself so tightly it couldn't be budged at all. And when Walters tried to cut it off... I was there for that. It was fascinating. One moment the knife was digging into the exoskeleton, the next there was green on the blade and Walter's hand." He grimaced. "A few seconds later the knife was completely dissolved and there was a hole in his hand you could store pennies in. Interestingly, the acid seems to be less effective on organic matter; metal gets dissolved completely while flesh may be only scarred- as long as the amount of acid is small."

Walsh made a note of that. "Without medical equipment, you couldn't have known why the Xenomorph had attached itself to Mandrake."

"Exactly. We thought it was feeding off him, that it was some sort of parasite. About twelve hours later... we found out we were wrong."

"What did you do when the creature started to expel itself?" Walsh asked.

"Well, it didn't right away. First, the creature on Mandrake's face fell off and died. At the time we thought that it was because it wasn't able to feed off species that weren't from its world, that our systems were just too different. We were very disappointed that it was dead; we thought it meant that our little encounter was already over." Traeten chuckled ruefully. "Mandrake regained consciousness, and was showing no ill effects of his experience, aside from being hungry... And then he started screaming."

Traeten's voice was frighteningly matter-of-fact as he described the death of his colleague. "The creature got away easily after it emerged, of course. It was very fast, and everyone was completely shocked at what had happened. The whole time, we'd managed to convince ourselves we were in control... we kept coming up with wrong explanation after false surmise. Burke was still saying Mandrake was having a heart attack even as his blood sprayed on the ground! We were out of our depth from the start."

"So Mandrake was dead and there was a hostile alien loose in the desert. Was that when you evacuated?" Even as she asked Walsh knew what the answer would be. Traeten would never have let an opportunity like this go so easily.

She was right. "No. I managed to convince the others, with backup from my superiors, that we needed to secure the organism, that we couldn't let something like this slip through our fingers. Ravnon was now rabid for this thing. Not only life from space, but dangerous life, with completely new reproductive and defence systems. The bio-warfare applications alone..."

Walsh nodded. She and Traeten had common ground on their views regarding the Xenomorph's awesome potential, if nothing else.

"I was told that a helicopter would arrive for us when we had captured the alien, to take it and us home. My company," Traeten said wryly, "is very skilled in motivating its employees. After we buried Mandrake, I sent the EEC employees out to search the desert. The organism that hatched from Mandrake was so small I was sure it couldn't have gone far. So I had them fan out around the camp while I coordinated the operation by radio."

"You didn't think the Xenomorph had any more surprises, did you?" Walsh said, purposely needling Traeten. It was unusually indulgent of her, but she felt justified given what Traeten had done to her operation.

"Would you have expected a twelve-inch larva to grow into a seven-foot creature in two hours?" Traeten shot back. "I have to admit, I still have no idea how they do that... What impresses me even more than that, though, is their intelligence. My first inkling that something was wrong was when I lost contact with Walters. It took the wounded, the most vulnerable of us first. It must have achieved complete surprise too: there was never any message from Walters of distress, or even suspicion, and he was one of the toughest on the team. When I sent Burke to find out what happened, he found Walters with his head missing. I ordered everyone back in a hurry, naturally."

"Your superiors must have had a good deal to say about these developments."

"Yes. They said they'd get the chopper in the air immediately, as soon as they'd loaded it with the toughest mercenaries they could get. We would be out of there in hours." Traeten was putting a lot of effort into maintaining his cool, controlled exterior, but Walsh thought he looked tenser as he recalled what had happened during that night of horror in the desert. The experience had affected him more than he dared admit.

"Burke never came back. The alien must have lingered near its kill and... He just disappeared. Now it was just me, MacReady, and Gummer left. We all huddled together in the centre of the camp and waited for the chopper. We didn't know exactly what was happening, none of us had seen what we were dealing with yet, but we could all tell that we were being picked off one by one, and that it was going for whoever was alone. It was night now, and I can tell you it didn't help our state of mind much."

"I can imagine," Walsh said dryly. "How long did you wait?"

"For the helicopter? We were told an hour. For the alien? Half an hour. I still don't know why it came after us. It couldn't have devoured both Walters and Burke's corpses in such a short time, and even if it had it wouldn't still be hungry. Maybe they're like humans, capable of killing for pleasure. I think it was opportunism. They appear have a great instinct for identifying and exploiting advantages and weaknesses. It couldn't pass up a chance to hit a vulnerable, isolated target."

"We've noticed that too," said Walsh. "They seem to especially like ambushes. What did it do to you?"

"Just... rushed us. There was almost no sound, just a faint patter of its feet as it came at us on all fours. I only got a glimpse of it, all I saw was like a large shadow. It came from Gummer and MacReady's side, and they had guns. But they didn't have much experience with them, and their state of mind… seeing that thing coming at us, in the dark… well, it wasn't very conducive to good aiming. They winged it slightly, and then it was gone. The exchange lasted less than five seconds."

"Ten minutes later it tried again. It had learned from last time, and figured out that the guns were what hurt it. So it came after me... This time I saw it perfectly, every single detail. It came for me, fast as a cat, and I froze. I don't know what happened next. I must have fainted or something. Maybe I was able to get out of the way, maybe one of the others saved me… The next thing I can remember is that MacReady was pinned under the alien, screaming and screaming. Gummer had lost his gun somehow and was trying to get it off Burke. I never saw either of them alive again, and I didn't look back as I ran."

"Where did you go?" asked Walsh.

"The other side of the camp. I knew it could catch me easily if I kept going, and there was nowhere to run but miles of desert. I hid as best I could and... just hoped that the helicopter would be early. The alien came for me a few minutes later, covered in blood. It took its time. It knew I was helpless. I remember being amazed at how it moved, how it was built, and I could feel the intelligence of the thing... I could swear that it was looking into my eyes, maybe even considering the best way to finish me. They're quite beautiful creatures you know, in their own unique way," he added conversationally. "It was only a few feet away when the chopper came. I'd closed my eyes, and when I opened them it was gone. It must not have known what to make of this huge, loud, bright thing in the sky and ran for cover."

"So you escaped," said Walsh. "Did the mercenaries catch it?"

"There were no mercenaries. My company wasn't able to get them on such short notice, and had decided on a plan of containment. Shortly after the chopper lifted off the camp was obliterated along with the alien. A Mongolian army artillery unit was conducting live-fire exercises at the time, and their targeting coordinates were mysteriously changed. When a return expedition was mounted, what remained of the creature was so pulverized that it was almost unidentifiable. I was promoted for remembering to grab the egg before I boarded the helicopter, and Ravnon covered up the whole incident. It would have stayed covered up too, if not for that tabloid and those meddling kids." Traeten paused and caught his breath, story done. A few beads of sweat had broken out on his brow as he'd told of the horrors he'd seen in the desert.

"Very interesting, Mr. Traeten," Walsh said. "That clears up a lot, but not the most important things. You released an incredibly dangerous organism on a civilian populace and have impeded the government's attempts to destroy it. I have yet to hear a single sane reason why you would do this. If anything, your experiences should have made you more eager to see the Xenomorph safely dealt with." She looked closely at Traeten. "I also can't help but wonder at what kind of good fortune led to the only member of Ravnon to have previously encountered these creatures being assigned to Sunnydale mere months before the Xenomorph appeared again." She leaned forward aggressively. "Did you know this was going to happen?"

He shook his head emphatically. "No, no. After the Mongolia incident, I was placed in charge of finding, studying, and exploiting the Xenomorphs if they ever appeared again. But in the meantime, since it was clear we were going to have nothing to work with but the empty egg for a while, my superiors decided that my experiences had made me the closest thing we had to an expert on dangerous nonhuman creatures. This eventually led to my posting at the Initiative." He smiled. "I assure you, Ravnon's bosses were absolutely overjoyed when another egg came, practically on the doorstep of their best qualified man for the job."

Walsh frowned. "So the alien appeared, and your company's dreams seemed to have come true," she said, "But what I am especially curious about, Mr. Traeten, is why exactly Ravnon wanted to take the Xenomorph from the Initiative. Our research-sharing agreement would have given the company absolutely everything it needed to fully pursue the alien's industrial uses. You would have gotten everything you wanted, and reaped immense profits. We just wanted it for military research."

"Exactly," said Traeten. "Just exploiting the industrial applications would have been no good. A monopoly on the defence potential is what we were after, and for that, we needed to be the only ones who had the alien- preferably the only ones who knew it existed."

Walsh frowned, thinking. The only defence potential for the alien she could think of, aside from the gleaming breakthroughs it offered project 314, was the possibility of replicating its armour somehow. The industrial applications, on the other hand, were massive. The immensely powerful acid alone could revolutionize manufacturing. Unless...

"You weren't thinking of taming them, were you?"

He laughed. "No, no. That would be an extremely... risky proposition at best. I'm surprised at you Professor. Haven't you realized what's really happening here?"

"Yes. You seem to be forgetting that you're a prisoner."

Traeten deflated noticeably, but kept talking. "Two eggs of this organism have landed on this planet in the last few decades, Professor. Do you know what the odds are of that happening by chance? Literally astronomical, even if you assume there are trillions of eggs which just happen to be tumbling through space. Outer space is simply too vast for such a thing to happen by chance. No," he shook his head, "Someone- or something- is launching the eggs towards Earth, is sending these things to us. Something that wants us, the entire human race, wiped out."

Walsh stared. If Traeten was right... "So that's why you released Hostile 100. If you had the only Xenomorph specimens, you would have a monopoly on the defence of the entire planet."

"Exactly." Traeten was amazingly frank about wanting to hold the human race's survival ransom. "We expected that sooner or later, a Xenomorph infestation was going to take permanent root on Earth and become a serious threat, or at least make the world leaders sit up and take notice. Once the governments of the world had realized we were being targeted by these 'meteors', they would be desperate to find out more. And if Ravnon was the only entity who really knew what we were dealing with, we would be able to name our price- money, power, influence, anything- for information on the enemy. Allowing the military to keep even one creature would have wrecked everything."

"Do you really think the Xenomorph has the potential to destroy the human race?" Walsh asked. She knew that the aliens were incredibly dangerous, and that they reproduced rapidly, but a world-destroying infestation... her mind refused to accept it.

Traeten eyed her amusedly. "You really don't know what you've got here, do you?" he said.

"I am rapidly growing tired of your insolence, Mr. Traeten," Walsh said. "Either cut to the chase or-"

"This isn't one of the overgrown animals you drag in here every day." Traeten's business facade suddenly cracked. "It's not one of the gimmicky creatures your civilian acquaintances kill on a weekly basis. The Xenomorph is perfect. It's the natural occurrence of what you've been trying to create artificially in Project 314: the absolute killing machine. Strong, fast, hard to kill, driven to survive at any cost, superbly adaptable, and equipped with enough cunning to plan and remember, but free of the weaknesses of conscience and sentiment that come with full intelligence."

"Yes," he continued, "I think the Xenomorph is very capable of destroying this planet. Maybe not today, not in Sunnydale, with the Slayer and the Initiative here to oppose them. But what about a meteor landing in a refugee camp in Africa? A slum in Hong Kong? There, the infestation could easily grow into the thousands and spread miles before-"

"Enough." Walsh shut Traeten up with a wave of her hand. His uncharacteristic admiration of these monsters annoyed her almost as much as his rudeness. "This is all besides the point. Your company isn't getting its monopoly, and whatever threat the Xenomorphs pose will now be evaluated and dealt with by the United States government. Get back to what you were up to after you released Hostile 100."

Traeten sighed, and resumed his normal behaviour. "We've had our facility poised for deployment ever since we learned about the alien's arrival. While it was captive, I planted a number of tiny beacons in its food every day. Enough of them remained in its body that our employees were able to track it after it's escape."

Walsh was shocked. "You've known where it was the whole time?"

"Oh, yes. Only half our people were guarding the facility. The second team has been observing the Hive ever since Hostile 100 settled there. Eventually we were going to recapture it, once we had enough data. It's going quite well... or was, until you and those ignorant civilians ruined it."

Something suddenly clicked for Walsh. "You had already located the aliens when we swept Weatherly Park, hadn't you? That wasn't a police officer who tried to stop us. It was one of your employees in disguise, sabotaging our operation."

"Yes, it was." He hid it well, but Walsh thought Traeten was a little disappointed at not getting to reveal this bit dramatically. She kept pressing.

"And the malfunctions your device was causing... You've been using them to manipulate us, pressure us into doing what you wanted. Very clever, having the lights in the meeting room fail just before you unveiled your so-generous proposal to take the new Xenomorph off our hands. Is all that right, Mr. Traeten?" He nodded.

"Hostile 100 has been reproducing, at a great rate. It's been using its larva to guard its nest until there are enough adult creatures to serve as defenders. That's why Riley was attacked when he entered the tunnels." Walsh gave Traeten a look that demanded immediate confirmation. He nodded again.

"Now, Mr. Traeten. One last thing." Walsh leaned forward again. "Where. Are. They?"

Traeten sighed. "After ambushing a group of subterrestials shortly after its escape to serve as incubators for its first children, Hostile 100 made its way underground to build its nest, and has been there ever since. The Hive is in an old cathedral that sank underground in an earthquake several decades ago."

Walsh smiled. "Thank you, Mr. Traeten. We'll take it from here." She turned to leave, but Traeten called after her.

"Our people are still there. They have orders to fire on anyone who interferes with their observations. You won't get in the Hive easily."

Walsh stared at him. "Mr. Traeten, I'm certain the only reason your company's observers have survived this long is that Hostile 100 has been too busy reproducing and raiding the hospital to deal with them hanging around it's territory. But by now there will be at least two adult Xenomorphs at Hostile 100's command. I expect they'll be put to good use."

"Look, these guys are tough," Traeten protested. "They're equipped with the best Ravnon can provide them, and they've stayed out of sight this long. We did lose contact with them just before you attacked, but it's probably just a downed transmitter. They're fine, and they'll give you trouble unless you do the smart thing and-"

The Professor's voice was cold as she swivelled on her heel and walked away. "No, Mr. Traeten, your people are already dead."