CHAPTER 7

June 23rd, 2179. Hadley's Hope terraforming colony, LV-426, Night cycle

Zeta2 Reticuli passed below the horizon while Calpamos filled a quarter of the sky where the thick grey clouds didn't cover the celestial vault. The twilight's purple tones gave pass to dark grey, black and dark blue. The colony's exterior floodlights turned on, bathing the central street with an eerie white led light. Hadley's Hope weather station reported a drop in temperature and a rise in wind speed. The few people working outside took cover and the main entrances of the complex were closed.

Personnel in Operations warned the farmers put their cattle in the underground pens. During the next 24 hours human activity would now be carried out exclusively indoors, traveling from one side to the other through the tunnel and corridors that connected the different parts of the complex.

Meanwhile inside the Colony's med-bay, oblivious to the activity that was taking place outside, Dr. Kent checked Russ Jorden, who had just woken up from his encounter with the alien life form.

-"How're you feeling, Russ?" Dr. Kent asked, while checking him with a stethoscope.

-"Tired, dizzy, my throat hurts" the man responded, and coughed "Coff… Coff, what happened?"

-"Don't you remember?" Anne asked him. "We were on that derelict, you were inspecting this… egg or something, and that creature jumped onto your face"

-"I… I don't remember, I was dreaming something about a dark place, and choking" he tried to remember, but all was diffuse.

-"Amnesia, probably due to the neurotoxins produced by that creature." Dr. Kent explained "I need to check you in the auto-doc, make sure you are fully recovered and then you can go home with your wife and children."

-"Ok, Doctor… coff coff… can I take some water?" Russ asked "my throat sores and I can't breathe well"

-"Here, drink it slowly" Anne poured some water in a glass and offered it to Russ. He drank the liquid desperately.

-"Take it easy, you're going to choke" Dr. Kent warned him.

-"Coff… Coff… Agghhh it hurts" Russ groaned. "Feel as if I had barbed wire in my throat… coff… coff" Immediately after that he vomited. Anne held him a bucket so that the contents didn't fall on the floor, then handed him a paper towel.

-"That creature's proboscis must have damaged your esophagus when it was forced in." Dr. Kent guessed "C'mon, get into the auto-doc. I'm gonna check you right now."

Anne helped her husband get up from the stretcher and walk to the MRI machine, there he lay back down and the plastic cover closed. Inside the maintenance vent, Newt, Timmy and Aaron saw the man lying with his bare torso while a blue laser scanned him from top to bottom. While the machine finished its analysis, Dr. Kent gave his impression to Anne, Wilson, Mary and Al Simpson, who entered at that time waiting for a report on the man's health.

-"How's he doing, Dr. Kent. Will he be ok?" Al Simpson asked.

-"Apparently, the parasite had died" He explained "It has to be something to do with incompatible biochemistry, as the creature is based in fluorine compounds and we are carbon based. All I can guess is the creature can't feed on Russ the same way we can't feed on cellulose or another non carbon based protein, the parasite simply died."

-"But you weren't sure it was a parasite" Wilson intervened.

-"There are anatomic differences" Dr. Kent pointed at the creature floating in the duroplastic container "Fluorosulfonic acid stored between silicon layer would act as a biological battery similar to those of an electric eel. That's just a theory of course, because we're comparing a non-terrestrial animal with a terrestrial one. That's the problem with xenomorphic life forms."

-"Xenomorphic life forms?" Al Simpson asked.

-"Yeah, every time a new life-form is discovered and xeno-biologists can't put them in one Order or even a Kingdom, the designation is 'Xenomorph', which is the Greek term for 'Strange shape' followed by a number indicating the date of discovery"

-"I prefer the term: Little ugly mother–" Mary said, her sentence was interrupted by a series of beeps from the MRI machine.

-"What–? The scans had found something" Dr. Kent said, he typed on the console and a 3D image appeared on the screen.

-"Oh my god" Anne exclaimed, followed by expressions of fright, fear and disgust of the rest.

Beneath the white shape of Russ' ribcage and inside the esophageal tube, another strange shape was twisting slightly. A serpentine body approximately 40 cm long, with an elongated tubular head approximately one third of the total length. A rounded eyeless face opened its snout slightly, showing razor sharp fangs. As the creature moved, Russ Jorden coughed.

-"We have to get it out! Now!" Dr. Kent said. The others were mute, Anne was especially horrified.

Dr. Kent hurried to open the sliding door of the auto-doc, pressed a few buttons, and the duro-plastic rose slowly. Suddenly, as if the creature inside the man was aware of the danger it was in, began to squirm more and more, with each movement his pointed tail and mouth full of teeth hurt the man. Anne and the others saw on the screen how the creature was twisting and Russ was debating and moaning in pain on the metal plate.

-"Coff Coff… Aaaaaghhh" He coughed and screamed, then coughed blood, staining the polycarbonate lid of the machine.

-"Jesus Christ!" Dr. Kent exclaimed. "It's coming out!"

On the screen, the little monster bit the inside of the ribs, making its way biting. Now Russ' screaming turned into shrieks. Blood pouring from his mouth and the fingers of his hands twisted unnaturally. Finally, the shrieks stopped as a blood covered, orange-red, eyeless head emerged from Russ chest. Dr. Kent backed in horror as Anne cried loudly. Wilson and Mary were mute, their eyes wide opened. Al Simpson vomited.

The creature screeched as it peered around, and Dr. Kent pressed a button. The auto-doc's lid stopped and closed again, leaving the creature trapped inside before it could escape. In the commotion, no one heard Newt, Timmy and Aaron screaming inside the vent.

-"Daaaaaddy!" Rebecca 'Newt' Jorden screamed, crying.

Dr. Kent again pressed some buttons; these were the ones which initiated a decontamination process, filling the machine with formaldehyde based gas. He didn't know if the gas will kill the creature but there wasn't time to think about it, it was more of an act of desperation than protocol. The little creature attempted to escape the machine, pounding furiously against the polycarbonate window until it cracked.

The creature jumped out and the gas leaked into the room. Marshal Wilson drawn his service pistol and fired upon the creature, but failed as the gas irritated his eyes. The gas leak turned on the sprinkler system and the room was covered with water, so Mary could not use her electric baton.

As the alarms blared, Simpson tried to escape the room, but Wilson shouted, still rubbing his eyes with the back of his hand "No! Lock the door! It must not escape the room!"

Simpson obeyed.

Dr. Kent tried to attack it using a scalpel but the creature pounced, biting him on the arm and he dropped the instrument. The alien was trying to escape but its exits were closed, it grunted and screeched furiously.

Water slipped through a drain in the floor of the medical room, and the creature noticed. It crawled up there, punched a hole in the drain grate and slipped inside. Its shrieks echoed as it lose in the drainage system.

-"Coff… Coff… Coff…" Anne was coughing intensely, Dr. Kent was trying to stop the bleeding where the creature had bitten him with a bandage; Wilson still had his eyes irritated and Mary and Simpson were blocking the entrance to the Med-bay. Suddenly they heard screams inside the far end of the room's ventilation grate.

-"Mooooommy!"

-"Newt!" Anne cried, and then she ran towards the grate and pulled it open. A crying Newt came out, followed by the two kids. "Newt! Tim! What are you doing in there?!"

-"Mommy? Is Daddy –?!" Newt looked at the blood stained auto-doc and the red trail on the floor, partially diluted and blurred by water.

-"Don't look baby" Anne said, covering her eyes with her hand. Tim hugs her. The door opened and Brad Lidecker and the other technicians on Operations stormed the room.

-"Dad!" Aaron called his father.

-"Aaron!" Lidecker exclaimed. The first thing he thought was that the children, led by their son, had been playing again inside the ventilation system and had caused a fire in the medical room but then he saw the blood stained auto-doc with Russ' corpse inside, bleeding from a hole on his chest. "What the Hell is happening here?"

-"Brad, we have a problem here, a real big one" It was all Al Simpson said.

- o –

Ok that was short, but basically it shown what the alien embryo did to Russ. None of the films had shown us the chestbursting both from outside and inside, this was possible thanks to the MRI machine. I think I'll add some horror because you did not only saw and hear the victim but also the little monster literally biting its way out. The witnesses immediately tried to kill the alien but unfortunately they didn't due to the chaos. Comic and Novels made the alien escape through the vents but I made it escape into the sewers, located in the sub-basement, the same place as the tunnel leading to the Atmosphere processing plant. The bug hunt begins.