Kjon's Audio Diary Log

Feb 2, 2621.

All the marines outside of Marlow's Valley had seen the mushroom cloud rise up over the horizon like a nuke had just exploded. By this time the marines had been in so many fights they knew what we were and what our technology was capable of. Such was also true for Major Hadrick Schaefer. Major Schaefer had come from a long long line of warriors, many of them which had encountered my species. Even he'd had an encounter with my species during his corporal years, when he was still relatively new to the Corps. He'd seen the mushroom cloud as it rose over the valley, and he knew who it was that had caused it.

With permission from Weyland, Major Hadrick lead a team of marines into what was left of Marlow's Valley to see if there was anything left of my clan , and if the shadows were destroyed. Schaefer was a very hardass marine, with a paraniod attitude that would put H.P. Lovecraft to shame. He'd been that way ever since his wife died during a xenomorph outbreak. The guy had no kids to father, and his lack of social skills practically made him an unapproachable prick, but when it came to combat, he was like all his great Schaefer ancestors. He was good at fighting, and he was a damn good leader on top of that, in fact I'd go so far as to call him the best Major this planet ever had seen.

Once he came across the blast sight, he discover my mother, who was still alive. She'd been badly beat up pretty badly, but she was still alive. And to make her suffering even worse she was going into labor. My mother had been five months pregnant with me and the rest of my litter when the fight had taken place. While you might think that five months is way to soon, that's actually regular pregnancy delivery to us. Major Hadrick called in a dropship to transport her along with a bunch of the leftover hunting equipment and technology that had survived the explosion over to Weyland's facility, where she spent the next seven painful hours giving birth to her litter

There were six of us total, and to Weyland that meant six perfectly good subjects that he could test and torture. He had me and my litter taken away from our mother and brought in for genetic augmentation. Weyland was going to convert us into bio-weapons to help control shadow outbreaks.

I know I was only a day old at the time, but even now I can still remember the whole thing. The pain. I can still remember felling the awful pain as Weyland's scientists hybridized me. They gave me gills, used some shadow genes to make my skin acid resistant, as well as a couple other things to make me fire resistant, and they put something in my eyes so I could see colors like Oomans can. As they did this, they gave me this disgusting solution that would allow my body to process the changes they were making to me and survive. That stuff burned like hellfire. Everything hurt; my skin, my lungs, my throat, my eyes, all of it just burning up. My other brothers and sisters had been augmented on just the same as I was, but they didn't survive. I was the only one to make it through the procedure, and live.

I don't remember what happened after all of the pain went away, but I do know what happened from what Mom told me. Once my augmentation was complete, I was returned to my mother, who they'd put in a metal containment cell. They'd given her some medical treatment just to make sure she'd live long enough to nurture me until I was older.

I can't imagine the shame and dishonor Mom was feeling at that moment. It hadn't been enough that she deliberately turned off her wristbracer's self-destruct sequence off, ensuring her capture, and allowing her technology to fall into the hands of Weyland Yutani, but now she had to have her only surviving pup become a hybridized Abomination. My clan does not take kindly to any of that. If you do even so much as one of those things you have not only dishonored yourself, but you've also dishonored the clan, and you must, and I mean MUST restore that honor, or you are no longer worthy to be deemed a member of society. Normally such dishonor would require you to honor kill yourself. But she just couldn't do it. She was to weak to do so. She'd not only allowed herself to survive the exposure, but also allowed our technology to fall into our enemies' hands. To top it off, her offspring had suffered the consequences of her dishonorable actions, and the only surviving pup was now a dishonorable Abomination. I too was a stain that needed to be removed. She could have restored what little honor she could by killing me, removing one less stain to her clan's honor.

But she didn't. She couldn't. She was still to weak. She'd lost her honor by allowing herself to be captured, our clan's tech to fall into the Ooman's hands, and let almost her entire litter die for a mistake she'd made. Mom had been waiting for the day she'd mother her offspring. To love her children, raise them, and train them to be great hunter warriors, who would bring great honor and glory to their clan. She'd wanted that so very much. But with her heresy, she'd allowed them all to die. All except for me, an Abomination. It would've been better to just let the wristbracer go off on her arm like it should have. But it was to late for that now.

She mourned tearfully as she caressed me in her arms. I was all she had left, and was unable to afford killing me, so she just did what was instinctual to her and continued comforting me like any mother does to her young. She looked down at me again and as she did she saw something that made her stop her grieving. There was something inside of me that made Mom feel hopeful. It filled her with a feeling of peace and assurance she couldn't describe. When she saw it, she began to cry again, only this time it was joyful. She couldn't describe the joy she felt or what it was that made her feel it, but she knew it had something to do with me.

I began crying as the solution worked it's way out of my system. That made Mom light up even more. She vibrated her mandibles in a soft shushing manner as she continued cradling me. After some comfort cuddling I opened my eyes. I have heterochromia which means my eyes are two different colors, my left eye is cyan blue while my right one is fiery red. Mom's joyful crying intensified as she saw them. I don't know how she herself could've known they were differently colored because she, like the rest of my species, was color blind, but she did.

After a couple weeks in the metal cell subsisting off of waste not even a Flusher hound would eat, we were moved to a larger containment cell. This one I spent much of my adolescence in. This enclosure was thirty times larger than the tiny ass cell they put us in before, it was lush and green. It had grass, foliage, and trees we could move and climb around on, and a huge side window where the sunlight could shine down on us. The ceiling felt like it was miles above the ground, although I was no larger than a basket ball at the time. I was a small suckling. Normally newborns are around a meter in length, but I was only half that size.

Mom didn't care though the only thing that mattered to her was that I was alive and healthy. About six months after my breast feeding period was over, Mom began teaching me to improve my motor skills and vocational skills. It wasn't crawling time anymore it was walking and running time. I matured rather quickly for a pup of my age, and at two years old I was talking in full sentences in two different languages. Mom had picked up English from the scientists and the guards that constantly starred at us from the other side of the thick bulletproof glass wall. The scientists were also teaching me the English language. They thought it would be a good idea for me to learn English since I would be spending much of my time around Oomans. Mother didn't shy away from our traditional language though, which for those of you who don't know, does consist of a spoken language as well as the occasional clicking, snarling, growling, and roaring, which I mastered fairly quickly.

As. I got older, Mom began to test me physically, and by that I mean she made me do some form of physical exercise. I enjoyed climbing up and down the trees, and hiding in the bushes on the ground. Mom actually encouraged me to do that too, as it would help me become a stealthily hunter. Mom would chase me up and down the trees as fast as she could, which we called "Tree Tag" and "Stealth" which is basically our version of hide and seek. That was the most fun we ever had together, although I knew that she was making me do this for a purpose. I still cherished those moments while I had.

Every night when we went to sleep under the four moons that orbited around the planet, Mom would sing these songs to me in our native language. Many of these lullabies she sang to me, to help me sleep, were about ancient hunter warriors that did incredible things, and were highly honored among society. My favorite lullaby that she sang to me every night was about a noble warrior Yatja that fought for the protection of his people with loyalty, honor, and bravery. He was known simply as the Protector. His reputation was so great even the Grand Leader himself looked upon the Yatja with favor. He would never go on hunts of his own unless it was for the safety of his people. The only things he ever hunted were dishonorable Bad Bloods, abominable Predaliens, and he would even fight the unspeakable Drukathi. Each night as she sang to me about this mighty Yatja warrior I would imagine myself as the Protector. A Yatja that would give his everything to protect the people he called his own. And looking back on it now I believe that when she sang those lullabies to me, I think she knew that I would become one of these great hunters.

I don't think I let her down.