She had been startled when he had fallen from the the waterfall that flowed from the western side of the plateau into the pond where she was bathing. The huntress had made a fresh kill out of a deer-like creature near there, and had been cleaning off the gore when he had noisily splashed into the far side of the pool. She had immediately dove to the bottom, tracking him with her electromagnetic sense. Humans dealt death from afar, no matter how many there were. She took no chances, and holding her breath for a long time was an easy feat.
Koening pushed from the bottom of the spring and took a long gasp of air when he broke the surface. He looked around for his messenger pack, which had found its way off his neck in his tumble from the Maximus facility's sewer duct. It was on the shore, and he promptly swam there. It had taken a few hours to get away from the commotion of his handiwork, but it was smooth sailing once he had made it to the maintenance levels. No one but drones made their way down there, and even then they were small Servitor models stripped of all hardware except that which they needed to service the machinery and other guts of the facility. Robert had found the secret exit in the sewer system by examining schematics of the facility on one of his vacation days. Now all that had to be done was to travel to his getaway shuttle some three miles due north and rendezvous with his extraction team that was posing as a deep space mining expedition somewhere in the sector.
The water had been warm, thankfully. He took off and wrung his clothes, getting most of the moisture out, and then inspected his pack. The case containing Maximus documents and essential test data still had its watertight seal in place; the hatchet, compass, and pistol he had were slightly wet but would most likely work; and his dinner was intact. If there was one thing that Koening had loved about the Maximus cafeteria, it was the military style shrink-wrapped meals. Convenient and tasty, not like the Weyland-Yutani reconstituted food of a suspicious nature.
Taking the compass out and ascertaining the direction he must go, Koening did not notice the sleek black silhouette quietly breach the water's surface. She peered over the threshold, her blue carapace a stark difference from the brackish green spring. The praetorian looked over her shoulder at the waterfall, then back at the strange human. Why would a human want to escape its own hive? Her curiosity was piqued. She could explore exactly where that opening went later, burning its location into her memory.
Koening set off towards his freedom, unawares of the shadow of death following him.
/ / / /
He was awake. He burned. He could see and yet did not see. There was not that much light, yet he could still see the white-washed walls as if it were day. He was dimly aware of the water dripping in the corner of his room from a fixture on the wall into a trough. He could hear it like the pounding of a drum, booming with every drop causing a disturbance on the otherwise calm water. He turned his head towards it. He felt thirst.
Taking a deep breath, he uncurled himself from the ball he was in, lying there for god knows how many hours in the middle of the room. Tyver gingerly began crawling his way toward the water, breathing in with a sharp hiss of pain at every ounce of pressure he put on his legs and arms and... tail? He did not remember ever having a tail before. Yet there it was, dragging along the floor behind him. He did not have the strength to lift it behind him, let alone the faculty to do so as it had not existed before whatever time it was now. It protruded from his rear with a smooth underside, pairs of staggered triangular blades ornamenting the top. The tail terminated in a large, thick, wicked blade that would be shining had the gray-silver material been illuminated by the naked sun. The blade held a trapezoid-like shape, curving inwards on the width-wise sides and ending in hooked edges.
Tyver imagined he would have looked pathetic, like some wounded puppy, but that did not matter now. What did matter was that he was now at the water. He looked down, and could not process the face that was reflected.
He had no eyes. His nose had shrunk down to two slits above his massive teeth. Opening his jaws, meeting some difficulty in stretching the fibrous tendons that held them together, nestled on the roof of his mouth was a smaller mouth with slightly smaller yet somehow more deadly looking incisors and canines. His lips were now simply little sheets that curled upwards slightly, barely being able to conceal the deadly instruments within. There were no cheeks to speak of, just a thick webwork of the alien tendons that felt like they could bite through solid metal with the same gusto as a hydraulic cutter. His forehead and scalp had been smoothed over into a domed shape, and branched outwards into a modest crest. His head as a whole was noticeably longer when he turned to the side.
His curiosity overpowered, he broke from examining himself and took many long draughts from the trough. Satisfied, he fell onto his back. He would have lain flat on the ground, but it appeared that he had spiked protrusions there. Tyver reached behind with his arms, finding six fluted blades. Then, he put his hands in front of his face, where his vision appeared to be situated. He still had five fingers, but now they were strong, clawed digits. Moving further up, the top of his forearms were markedly different than the cords of muscles and chitin, being smoothed over and reflecting some of the dim light. Another interesting thing was that there were lines tracing a stick figure shape of his body, the same color as the tail blade. A line came in from each finger and joined at the wrist to travel up the arm towards the neck, while the same was true of the toes and legs. The line went up the middle of his torso, then branched into two lines where the neck meets the head, spiraling out into intricate designs across the crest. From the middle of the crest another line traced the spine down into the tail and finally connecting with the tail blade.
Exhausted, the boy in a strange body sprawled out across the floor. One thing was for certain: Tyver was no longer merely human. He was something... different.
/ / / /
Across the facility, Ben held an ice pack to a bruise on the side of his head.
It was one day after the sabotage of the facility, and Ben still had a nasty headache from whatever device had caused that awful screeching, on top of the bruise he had sustained when his carriage had fallen. An examination of the bodies afterwards indicated that there was also a radioactive aspect to it, and having been suspended behind multiple layers of thick bulletproof and acid-resistant glass resulted in only being exposed to the equivalent of an x-ray.
He was currently watching the fruits of his labor via vidscreen from within his apartment. Though there was a lab located adjacent to the containment chamber, Maximus had also opted to utilize live feeds from cameras as the means to observe the inhabitant within. The Professor's outstanding status of being a prisoner was accommodated, as well as providing a source of entertainment to other inhabitants of the facility at some later date once the subject was more ambulatory. Darkarlov suspected that now that the creature had been made, it must now be broken. The purpose of changing a human into a xenomorph was to hopefully retain its consciousness, and thereby be more susceptible to understanding, communicating, and ultimately take orders from its human overseers. That was the plan, at least.
Darkarlov turned around at the sound of his door's hydraulics working. They opened to reveal a woman of medium stature in a red and yellow jumpsuit, wearing a green ponytail through the back of her cap. The name sewn into the top left part of her attire read "Jessica H." She was carrying what looked to be a suitcase with red cross in a white circle emblazoned on it.
"Hullo Ben," she said as she was stepping in. "Have to do another scan to make sure there aren't any other nasty surprises from that bomb thing. Oh, is that him then?"
"Indeed it is. Ah, hello to you to Jessica. How is Marrek doing? I heard he took a tumble when our guest broke free of his restraints." Darkarlov went to sit down at the dining table.
"Oh, not too bad. He just has a minor concussion and some bruised ribs. Nothing some time, good meds, and a loving wife can't fix." She put her case on the table, opened it, and took out what looked to be a gun with a panel on its left side. "Doctor's orders are to stay in bed for two more days, and I keep on catching him trying to get up and walk around. In fact, I imagine he's doing that right now. I'm actually going to need you to stand up and put yourself like Da Vinci's man. There we go."
Jessica traced Darkarlov's outline with her instrument, looking at the data readout in the panel. Satisfied, she began to put the device away. "Everything checks out. Thanks for asking after Marrek. I wish I could stay, but I still have to hit a couple more people before going back to the infirmary." She closed up the case, then put something into the palm of her hand.
"Alright then," he replied. They shook hands. Jessica went out the door, which locked behind her.
Darkarlov looked at the slip of paper that she had handed him. It read, No dice.
With a deep sigh, he walked over and sat in the recliner he had placed in front of the vidscreen. Prisoners they were, prisoners they would stay.