Dallas stared at her with a look of distrust, as Lambert looked on with her arms crossed.
"I'll show you."
She walked into the flight cabin, and took the small hallway to the computer mainframe, with Dallas and Lambert closely following.
Waking up the MU/TH/UR mainframe, the command prompt appeared, ready for anything a user typed in.
Hands resting on the keyboard, she typed in words she could never forget. The words that had told her that she, and everyone else aboard the ship, were nothing but physical bait, worth no more than a bug to a fisherman.
WHAT IS SPECIAL ORDER 937?
INSUFFICIENT CREDENTIALS FOR ACCESS
EMERGENCY COMMAND OVERRIDE 100375
"Ripley!"
He jerked, grabbing her hand before she could hit enter.
"You can't just use an emergency override like that! Look, if the company catches us using emergency commands while-"
"Dallas. Ask yourself, why do I not have access to the order?"
He stared at her, his tongue caught mid-sentence.
Speaking slowly, impacting the weight of what they just realized, she continued.
"If the command was invalid, it would return a response saying so. It didn't."
Lambert put one hand on her mouth in fear, the other at her side.
"It said I didn't have access. Not that it was invalid."
Dallas took a deep breath, grabbed his captain's key from his front pocket, and keyed it into the override slot next to the terminal.
"Try it with captain's profile, first."
WHAT IS SPECIAL ORDER 937?
INSUFFICIENT CREDENTIALS FOR ACCESS
"Override it, emergency command."
EMERGENCY COMMAND OVERRIDE 100375
WHAT IS SPECIAL ORDER 937?
NOSTROMO REROUTED
TO NEW COORDINATES
INVESTIGATE LIFE FORM. GATHER SPECIMEN.
PRIORITY ONE
ENSURE RETURN OF ORGANISM
FOR ANALYSIS
ALL OTHER CONSIDERATIONS SECONDARY.
CREW EXPENDABLE
Leaning back in the seat, she looked at them both. First, at Dallas, his expression of shock and anger, then at Lambert, who shed tears of fear and confusion.
"Dallas, what does that mean? What does crew expendable mean?" Lambert pleaded with him, grabbing his arm.
"We were sent here to die, Dallas."
With evidence beyond belief in front of him, straight from an unaltered source, he caved.
"I don't know what to do, Ripley. How did you find out about this?"
A tone of utmost seriousness, she recounted everything that originally happened in a gripping fashion. From Kane's initial facehugger incident and death, Brett's disappearance, his own vanishing in the vents, with Parker and Lambert's final moments in the storage area.
"In the end, with everyone dead and the ship unsafe for any rescue team or recovery operation, I activated the self-destruct sequence and escaped aboard the Narcissus."
She paused, taking a moment to breathe, and cope with what she had just relived in full.
Lambert had disappeared, presumably to escape the gruesome recounting of Ripley's experience, and to relay everything currently going on with the rest of the crew.
"Dallas, all of this was caused by a single person. And an entity beyond our grasp, but this person made sure it went as planned, and sabotaged multiple plans to contain the thing."
An indiscernible look across his face, a mix between anger and bravery, he asked a single word question.
"Who?"
She sighed, the frustration and rage she had felt at this person surfaced once more, even after it being so long ago, in her own mind.
"Ash. A synthetic sleeper agent, replaced our usual medical officer, placed amongst us by the corporation responsible for everything."
"Weyland-Yutani?"
She nodded in confirmation.
"I recall hiring a man by that name, back before we left. He disappeared, but never unregistered himself from the crew list. I assume he just jetted."
Sighing, he continued after a brief moment.
"I'll decide how to proceed in the next few hours. In the meantime, I'm going to clear my mind, and you should too."
He began walking out of the mainframe capsule, but paused at the door.
"Ripley, don't let yourself dwell on this. It's too much for one person, even myself."
"I won't."
And with that, he left, leaving her in a room full of blinking lights, all twinkling like stars in the sky around her.
Sitting in the chair, staring at the blinking terminal, she collected her thoughts. Placing a hand on her left temple, she closed her eyes and let her mind wander to the final events aboard the Sulaco.
The image of the alien queen, snarling fiercely through the jaws of the power loader, burned into her memory. It was easy to relive any xenomorph encounter over and over, repeat after repeat, but she focused her mind and will towards Newt.
Where was she now?
Or, rather, where would she be in the future?
Drifting through warm imagery of her, Newt, and Hicks all three sharing a dinner before going to sleep once more comforted her more than anything. The last time she had with them, before waking up here again.
Considering her memories, in fact, that was the last time she saw anything before waking up here. Going into hypersleep on the Sulaco and then waking out of hypersleep aboard the Nostromo.
"From a sweet dream, straight into a nightmare." She thought to herself. The roller-coaster hell-ride of xenomorphs and Weyland-Yutani's destructive obsession with them was a cyclical process, even through time.
Before her thoughts could wander any further, a scream broke through the quiet air, sending chills through her spine and a shiver through her limbs. A scream so primordial and scared in nature, it's a sound of pure instinct to anyone within range.
Leaping to her feet, she rushed through the passageways of the flight cabin back to the dining room, only to come upon a chaotic scene that was quickly decaying in disarray.
Dallas was yelling something, aiming his own revolver across the room at Parker, who stood clutching his left hand with his right hand.
Lambert cowered behind him, crouched in a corner, while Kane sat frozen in his chair at the table through the whole ordeal. Brett stood in a doorway off behind Parker, out of the way.
Placing her hand on her own revolver, she began unlatching the holster strap, even though the situation was already explosive as it is.
"Shut up!" Dallas began screaming over everyone, his voice bellowing in the tightly contained room, echoing down the open passageways.
"Everyone shut up! Just shut the fuck up!" Everyone stopped, the room coming to a deathly silence, not another word was needed.
"Dallas, please, I-" Parker was tearing up, his face a mixture of confusion and fear, glancing back and forth at the hand he cradled on his chest.
"Shut up! God damn it, just shut up!" He gestured his revolver at him, wiping sweat off of his own forehead and taking a quick look around the room.
He looked at Ripley, and nodded at her.
"Ripley, take out your weapon and arrest him right now."
"Dallas, what-"
"Now!" He barked tersely.
She obliged, finishing retrieving her weapon from her holster, making her way slowly around the table and bench seats to the other side.
As she got closer, Dallas circled around the other side, getting closer as well. He never broke his aim throughout the ordeal, keeping his firearm closely trained at the center of Parker's chest.
"Look at his hand." He said lowly.
"I just cut myself, that's-" Parker pleaded, in tears, hunched over in fear.
"I said shut up!" Dallas yelled again, his hands slightly shaking.
Ripley tentatively took his hands, examining his left one. Out of it, a milky substance dripped through a small slice on his index finger.
Upon seeing it, she looked at Dallas, who glanced towards her.
"He's not Parker. I don't know what he is, but he's not our Parker."
As she rubbed the milky substance between her fingers, the answer was clear. The liquid coming out of Parker was synthetic lubricant, an android's lifeblood and filler inside any synthetic android.
"My god, he's a synthetic." She said, her voice wavering.
Parker began pleading with the two, through his tears.
"I swear, I'm not a synthetic, it's me, please-"
"Shut up! You're not Parker!" Dallas' voice was pained, but loud nonetheless.
Ripley grabbed a zip-tie from her pocket, and bound his wrists with it.
Together, the three walked down the corridors leading to the medical laboratory, locking him inside. It wasn't a brig, or even a very good makeshift one, but the giant bulletproof glass would serve as a good observatory way of keeping track of him.
Using his keycard to force the door to lock, Dallas talked one last time to Parker over the door intercom.
"If you make any attempt to escape, or fashion a weapon, you'll be shot on sight."
Parker laid down on the medical table, his back to them. His back shook with sobs, and they walked down the passageways once more to the dining room.
Still reeling from their discovery, Ripley couldn't help but feel something was wrong.
"Dallas, I don't think this is right. I mean-"
"He's a synthetic. I'd call you crazy, call myself crazy over all this, if it weren't for the special order."
He paused, considering his words and thoughts, then continued.
"Ripley, was Parker a synthetic too?"
"No. Flesh and blood, like the rest of us. Aside from Ash."
He sighed, looking away.
"Then that thing, it isn't our Parker. I can't trust it."
The situation didn't sit well with her, even with the certainty of his synthetic status.
"But, what if it is?" She asked, a hard question to deliver in the moment.
His expression turned to one of remorse, but quickly pushed it away. Looking her in the eye, he said with a straight voice the only response he could give.
"I can't answer that question."