Catherine herself escorted them down a carpeted corridor to a series of rooms. She handed everyone a card key.
"Now, I don't know how you prefer your sleeping arrangements," she said, " but I'm giving you two rooms. I'm afraid it's the best I can do until another guest leaves. Each room has a bed, a bunk bed, and a fold-out. Please, make yourselves comfortable. When you are ready, come back to the lobby and we can see about getting you something to eat. You must be hungry this late in the day."
She bid them goodbye and departed.
"I guess we can split the rooms up into guys and gals," Dawson suggested..
"Unless you want to go co-ed," Johner said with a wink. Ripley smacked him.
"Damn it, that's getting old, Ripley!"
Ripley only smiled innocently. "Just like you, right?" She turned away before he could respond.
Everyone freshened up in their respective rooms. Though Slate didn't want to let their guard down yet, she allowed everyone to drop most of their gear. She did, however, suggest that everyone carry at least one sidearm. Once they were ready, they went back into the lobby. This time, they were approached by a man in a concierge uniform. He nodded at them.
"Ah, you must be the new arrivals. I am Topin. Catherine asked me to escort you to dinner. But perhaps you would like a little tour first?
Johner's stomach rumbled. "Uh, how long is the tour exactly?"
"Fairly brief," Topin responded. "Just a few key facilities you may need during your stay."
"Then let's get this over with, Johner grumbled.
Topin led them through more carpeted halls, showing them the various amenities the hotel had to offer - a spa and gym and theater and the medical office. Ripley was as impressed as everyone else, but she also found this place to be quite bizarre. A hotel like this was quite out of place for a shipping facility...no matter how its residents justified it. It was like putting nice wallpaper over a disgusting moldy wall to hide it from sight. So what were these people hiding?
She looked at Topin carefully, coming to the conclusion that he looked too happy, too cheerful. He was leading them to a door with stained glass panels.
"And here is our all-faiths chapel, he was saying. "I don't suppose any of you are religious at all?"
Everyone shook their heads.
"Well, that's quite all right," Topin said amiably. "Not everyone is destined to be elevated to the next life."
Dawson raised her brow. "Next life?"
Topin looked embarrassed. "Oh, I'm not very good at explaining it," he murmured. "I'm a new believer. But here - meet our minister. He can explain it much better than me."
He opened the door and waved everyone in.
The chapel was a room large enough to hold maybe a hundred people comfortably, but was still small enough to be cozy. There were rows of folding chairs in the middle of the floor space, and a podium at the front. Various religious icons rested in alcoves in the walls. There was a man dressed in a hooded robe tending to the candles on a table. Topin called to him.
"Zorphus, I've brought visitors!"
"Very good," a robotic voice replied. The man turned to approach them, his face hidden by the hood. "Welcome, friends, to our humble home. I pray it may be a place of enlightenment for you. Perhaps you might even seek to be elevated, in time."
Slate and Dawson shared a look.
Ripley glanced at Call, when something moved out of the corner of her eye.
"Watch out!" She shouted, whipping out a pistol.
A xenomorph had appeared. It did not appear to be in a hurry. For some reason it was clutching a mop in its claws.
Everyone else pulled out their own weapons and would have fired, but the man called Zorphus cried out in his tinny voice and stepped between them and the alien. "Stop!"
"It's an alien!" Slate growled. Those things killed my men. Why are you defending it?"
"Because, Zorphus said, drawing back his hood, "it is one of us."
Ripley stared. Zorphus's face looked like something out of a nightmare, or an early experiment aboard the Auriga. There was clearly a facehugger on him - it was still breathing for him and everything. It looked like there had been an attempt to remove it, as one of his eyes had a hole to peer through. But his skin looked like it had melded with the facehugger. An electronic voice synthesizer had been attached to his throat, enabling him to speak without his mouth - explaining the robotic voice.
"He," he said as he pointed to the passive xenomorph, "is Charlie. He was our main janitor before he was elevated to the higher form you see now. But he still likes to help with mopping from time to time."
Slate felt a chill run down her spine.
"You...seriously think that that monster is your dead friend?"
Zorphus laughed. "But of course!" He appeared to notice everyone's horrified expressions. "Let me explain. Topin, you may go."
Topin made his exit, and Zorpus continued.
"I'm sure you all understand the concept of evolution. How species are constantly adapting to survive better than other species in what is basically an arms race. That explains the progression of the body, but what about the soul? No one can argue that humans are not soulful creatures. What makes us who we are, our essence, must go somewhere when we die, or else it is wasted. So when we discovered these creatures and how they grow, of course it only made sense that the human body is no better than a meat vehicle for the soul. And when the soul leaves the body at the same time one of these new creatures is born, it must enter the new body that burst forth. After all, that new body is just as much the flesh of that soul as its old body. It's an advancement," he said grandly. "A new step in human evolution. Think of it, an end to human infirmity. An end to disease, an end to disability. An escape." His eyes rested on Vriess.
"For instance, if you chose to be elevated, you would have a new body. You would be freed from the confines of that chair, resurrected in a more powerful form."
"So what about you?" Dawson asked, trying not to look at the xenomorph. "You look like you've had that thing on your face for a long time. Why haven't you been, um, elevated?"
Zorphus sighed. "Ah, it is an unfortunate sacrifice I must bear as a minister for this new revelation. My crawler is sterile, and joined with my mind and body during an accident. But I am happy to play my part as an emissary. After all, our facility has become a much happier place since I won many souls to this ideology. Believe it or not, the whole hotel thing was a cover for a drug and human-trafficking operation before. But now it will be a gateway for elevating people all across the galaxy - a more pure and holy mission!"
"How many people here have you taken?" Call asked through gritted teeth.
Zorphus couldn't grin, but his eye glinted in amusement. "All of them."
"How?" Ripley asked. "You wouldn't have enough eggs to...elevate...even half of the people in the hotel."
"That is where you are wrong," Zorphus replied." Along with a dozen eggs, we recovered a cloning pod from the wreckage of a ship. Thus we are able to generate as many as we need for our sacred mission." He paused. "But...how would you know about the eggs?" He looked at Ripley as if seeing her for the first time. His eye widened, and he took a step back. He sensed the Alien blood in her, but it made no sense to him.
"You...are kin? But you are not carrying. You are not elevated."
"I'm elevated enough," Ripley retorted.
Zorphus appeared at a loss for words. But then he shouted. "Blasphemy! Charlie, subdue them!"
The xenomorph dropped the mop and lunged forward. Everyone drew their pistols except Ripley, who jumped in its path. The xenomorph paused, smelling her. It detected the Queen-blood in her. It bowed.
"Charlie, get her!" Zorphus screeched. But the xenomorph had found a higher command.
"Give it up," Ripley said. "You can't stand between a mother and her children."
Zorphus didn't reply, his eye flashing in anger. "I don't know what you are, but you are just...just a filthy human. You will not stand in the way of my calling!" He pulled a radio from beneath his robe.
"Catherine, it's time. Begin the Release."