CHAPTER 5: TO START A NEW LIFE.
December 28 th , 2095. Earth Central Time. Engineer planet designated as "Paradise."
Slowly, very slowly, Elizabeth Shaw opened her eyes. The bridge was dark, except for the dim light in the center of the vaulted ceiling. She took a deep breath of the moist air. She felt and the urge to cough filled her throat.
Sitting up inside the sarcophagus gagging, she expelled a clear gelatinous liquid. Despite this, the typical disorientation or dizziness product of hypersleep was absent. The cryogenic chambers of the engineers apparently canceled the adverse effects of hypersleep that affected the crews of human ships.
-"How are you feeling Elizabeth?" David's voice drew her gaze. The android was standing there, a few meters away. There was something strange about him, he suddenly realized what it was: the blonde tint in his hair had washed out and now he sported the original dark brown. He was using one of the engineer robes, just like Shaw's, albeit his was dirty and covered with multiple indigo stains.
-"How long?" she asked, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand.
-"Sooner than we imagined." David responded, "and in perfect timing."
-"Perfect timing?" She shook her head, "What do you mean?"
-"If I am correct," David put a hand on his chin and looked up questioningly. "It is your Birthday again."
-"My birthday?" Shaw asked.
Yes," David smiled. She jumped off the chamber hurriedly. "Wait," he stopped her, "you need to recover from hypersleep first."
-"I'm fine," Shaw nudged him slightly and walked to the nearest porthole. "I need to see it." She stopped and turned to David. "How is it?"
-"Just perfect." He responded stoically.
The image of a pristine world filled Shaw's mind. Perhaps, after all, what had happened on that sinister moon could have been the work of rebellious individuals, not a reason to believe their entire race were so violent. At last she could get the answers to the questions that haunted her mind...
It was dark out there. All Shaw could make out was a vast stone plaza, shimmering pale blue in the light of not one, but three moons. But that was not all, scattered all over the place there were... Elizabeth narrowed her eyes, there were thousands of dead bodies!
-"David?" she asked. The android closed in from behind. "Wha-what… happened here?!" He looked at her with an expressionless face. Shaw then realized. "What did you do?!"
David remained silent. His usual calm demeanor now has a more sinister tone.
-"What did you do?!" She repeated, screaming. "Why?!"
-"I freed them from an existence of servitude," David responded.
Elizabeth hyperventilated, clearly agitated. What the hell was he talking about? Free them? What David had done was nothing but plain genocide.
-"You murdered them!" she yelled. The android approached her slowly.
-"Elizabeth, the Garden of Eden was sealed in order to keep those who were cast out." David tried a conciliatory tone, "but also, to keep those who remained inside from leaving."
Shaw couldn't understand the synthetic's explanations.
-"Mankind was cast out because of its rebellious nature," he continued, "its ability to become gods." As David got closer, she backed towards the airlock. "The inhabitants of this world remained in cultural stagnation, they would never reach their full potential… that would inevitably lead them to their death."
-"You had no right, David!" Shaw claimed, sniffing at the tears that fell on her mouth. She had reached the hatch and descended into the gloomy necropolis. He leaned over the first body he saw and touched its arm. Her limb disintegrated, breaking it by the elbow. "No right!"
-"This…" David said, climbing down the ship, "Is my gift to you, Elizabeth." He held out his arms to the macabre scene. "The opportunity to create new life." he closed his right hand and then opened his fingers, simulating a blossoming bud. "Life as beautiful as you are."
"No," Shaw shook his head, "No...no...no!"
-"Wasn't that what the Hymn to Nikkal was all about?" The android asked, confused by the woman's refusal. "bring the promise of creating life to a barren woman?"
Oh god , Shaw realized in horror. He had gone completely insane. In his ambition to obtain immortality, Weyland had created David with the ability to ignore ethics in favor of the greater good. Now, free of his master's grasp, he had developed a god complex even bigger than his creator's. Not only the apple hasn't fallen far from the tree, but it was completely rotten.
-"You're not a fucking god, David!" She shrieked, then she ran back to the ship.
-"Elizabeth..." David yelled, "wait!"
But the archaeologist ignored it, she climbed up the hatch and sped towards the bridge. She almost jumped over the control panel and pressed the semi-spherical button. Shaw breathed heavily as she pressed various buttons.
"Oh, Country roads," Elizabeth hummed with difficulty, gasping. The map began to rotate. "take me home…" She pressed another button and pushed a lever. A beam surged from the planet and crossed space towards Earth. "To the place I belong…"
-"Elizabeth!" David appeared on the bridge.
-"Get away from me!" She cried. The beam reached its destination and the ship reverberated. David lost balance and fell to his knees. "Take me home, country roads…"
Shaw brought his palm down hard on the gelatinous hemisphere. A buzz filled the room. "Dr. Shaw. Stop!"
The Juggernaut shot up and crashed into the docking ring above them. The impact knocked the ship out, sending it spinning out of control over the city, heading for the mountains.
Elizabeth didn't have time to grab onto the chair, the centrifugal force throwing her and David against the wall.
The colossal spacecraft zoomed through the forest, uprooting trees as it plummeted down the slope. Finally, with a crash, it crashed into a rocky ledge, releasing a cloud of dust and stones. The force of the crash detached the telescope-shaped structure and it fell.
-"Elizabeth!" David yelled, "watch out!"
The bulk fell on Elizabeth, who barely had time to scream, holding out her arms to protect herself from the falling object.
When the dust settled, David ran to where Shaw was. He lifted the piece of metal effortlessly and yanked the woman unconscious. He checked her vital signs, barely detectable.
-"Dr. Shaw?" he asked in a whisper, lightly stroking her cheek. "Elizabeth?"
Shaw opened his eyes and coughed up blood, the red droplets stained David's face. Shaw tried to scream at the sight of the synthetic on top of her, only to get a blood clot to clog her throat. "Easy, Dr. Shaw." David put two fingers into his mouth and removed the obstruction. "There it is, breathe."
The woman was unconscious, her pulse and breathing slowed with each passing second. If he had a capsule available he could put her in there and keep her alive while he figured out how to repair the damage. But the De'va ship's hypersleep chambers were embedded in the structure.
David was to get her quickly back to the temple. He scooped her up in his arms and ran back to the city.
As he stepped out of the Juggernaut, he saw the city, shimmering in the distance. The docking ring had crashed on the opposite side. David descended from the mountain and hurried through the iron gates. When he finally deposited her over the stone slab under the gaze of the effigies, Elizabeth Shaw had perished.
- o -
David inserted the needle into Shaw's temple. He set the charge to thirty amps. He had seen Ford perform the return operation on the Prometheus. He pressed run and a small electric shock went through the needle and into Shaw's brain.
Her right index finger twitched. He repeated the maneuver and this time there was movement in the eyelids.
The procedure was working, although the synaptic re-initiator was designed to keep neurons active momentarily and not revive an individual, David only needed to keep Shaw's body alive long enough for the pathogen to take effect.
The substance affected cellular matter, specifically those with mitochondrial DNA, the meat, David would say. But for reasons unknown to the android, it was only effective if it was alive.
David started another discharge and this time, Shaw opened her eyes. The android heaved in relief. It worked. Quickly, he filled a small syringe with the black liquid, took it with his left hand and depressed the plunger lightly to break up any air bubbles. "Welcome back, Elizabeth."
Shaw's eyes widened and he tried to move but couldn't. Terror washed over her and she assumed that David had drugged her. "This will help you," David said, sticking the needle into her neck and discharging the liquid.A burning sensation ran through her body.
A tear rolled down Shaw's cheek. David carefully cleaned it with a piece of cloth. "Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change." David recited, setting aside the syringe and picking up a scalpel. Shaw tried to raise her head and looked horrified. Her body had been sectioned on the stone slab as if it were an autopsy.
Her skin and organs had been carefully pushed aside. David inserted the scalpel into the body cavity, then removed something with tweezers. The machine attached to her temple beeped, and Shaw vanished. Before losing consciousness forever, she realized with horror that what David had removed from her body was one of her ovaries.
"So much has been done," He quoted, he quoted, twirling his tweezers and gazing proudly at the small fleshy oval. "More, far more, will I achieve;" he deposited the ovary inside a petri tray. He put aside the tweezers and walked towards a wooden desk. He examined a papyrus filled with inscriptions and a monstrous shape was drawn. "Treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the world the deepest mysteries of creation."
- o -
A/N: And we finally reached the final chapter. I just want to say it has to be dark, because canon demanded Elizabeth Shaw be killed by David and turned into the hideous creature bisected on his lab. Thought we didn't see the extent of all of David's experimentation, I wanted to point the fact he used Shaw's eggs to make the xenomorph we see in Alien: Covenant.
I assumed she died in the crash as he told Walter, then used the synapse reinitiator to re-vive her and experiment with the black goo.
The title of this chapter came from a quote from Alien: Covenant "All of this, to start a new life," said by Daniels. It also refers to the fact David is creating literally a new life.
The quote recited by David at the end is from Frankenstein, or the modern Prometheus, a novel from Mary W. Shelley, the wife of Percy B. Shelley, the author David misquoted in the movie.
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