.x.

After a while, when all the emotions I had been battling back for so long could no longer be denied, I curled in on myself and wept. To think that I could have gotten on that helicopter the day before and left, that I could have lived the rest of my life in blissful ignorance never knowing what lay beneath the depths of Bouvetoya's ice … Instead I was here, lost within the giant depths of a temple built by a sadistic and brutal race of beings who literally lived for the hunt.

And the predators … I'd nicknamed the one I'd traveled with Scar, because of his own mark and the one he'd wanted to give me. When travelling with Scar I'd held out hope that I may just make it through this alive. Foolish hopes, I realized, sobbing into my knees—ridiculous to have even thought I could have made it out of here. Scar was gone, and his companion—I'd dubbed him Celtic for the uniqueness of his mask—obviously did not hold me in the same regard. He'd saved me from the alien spiderling, yes, but he'd taken my only weapon and had threatened me when I'd attempted to follow him. The spear in no way guaranteed my survival, but it had given me a chance. Without it …

Without it, I was just dead meat.

And so I sat, for how long I don't know, crying tears of desperate hopelessness and frustration. I was aware I was making myself an easy target. What was the point of pretending that I had any chance of surviving this? When finally my head pounded and there were no more tears to shed, I got wearily and painfully to my feet. The hall around me was dark, eerily silent and thankfully devoid of any more creatures. I contemplated remaining there but realized I couldn't. If there were any hope at all for me, it would be in finding the exit to this hellhole. I began to walk, going the same way as Celtic, hiccoughing softly the way one does after a good, hard cry. I wandered for a long time then, vaguely aware I may be wandering in circles and too numb mentally to really take care. When the pyramid would reconfigure itself I would stop moving and wait for everything to become stable before continuing on. A humorless smile lifted the corner of my mouth as I realized how very much I was like a rat in the proverbial maze.

I continued this way until I reached a circular chamber that had no exit save for the one I had come through. I cast a perfunctory glance around, spotting a small opening set halfway up the wall but too small to lead anywhere. I sighed and turned to retrace my steps to some earlier point and continue on from there—

Agony.

Everything ceased in that one instant, in that dissection of a moment as I tried to breathe past the sudden, rending torment that assailed me. My knees buckled but I remained upright. Stunned, my gaze fell to the thin jagged, ebony, spear-like appendage that protruded from my right shoulder. Blood—my blood—coated it, and it glistened even in the lack of light. Impaled, pinioned, I fought to turn my head, fought to see what I knew I would see—

-the young alien's head next to my own, breath hot on my face as its jaws spread wide. Held aloft by its tail, all I could do was manage a weak whimper. It echoed me with a mockery, a grating screech that reverberated in my ears. It would pierce my brain with its hidden jaws, I thought in icy horror, it would feast on my flesh—

And with a flick of its tail, I was airborne. I hit the wall on my side and I hit it hard. The several feet I plummeted to the ground winded me. The pain in my shoulder was staggering. Lying prone on my side I watched, gasping, as the alien paced the floor in front of me, tail flicking back and forth like a cat playing the game with a mouse.

It took me two tries to get to my feet and I couldn't do it without clutching the wall. Blood trickled in warm rivulets down my arm to drip from my fingers. I could feel it leaving me, could feel my already meager strength ebbing. The alien gave a piercing hiss and lunged at me. I screamed, even though it never came close to connecting.

Toying with me.

A vivid recollection came to me then of the small hole I'd seen in the wall when first I'd entered, large enough to hold me, I was sure, but too small for the alien. I cast a quick, frantic glance that way, estimating, gauging. It was set at least five feet up, how would I reach it? The alien shrieked and lunged again. I stumbled to the side as it fell back.

Now.

I ran for the wall and made a desperate leap. The hand of my uninjured arm caught the edge of the opening. I strained with all my might to hoist myself up, my feet scrabbling furiously for purchase on the wall. I hooked my elbows over the edge and felt then more pain, different pain in one of my legs. The alien had me in its grasp.. My screams mingled with its own and resolutely it pulled me downwards, ever downwards—

NO!

I twisted, ignoring the agony in my shoulder, blocking out the sensation of claws being slicing their way down my shin. I lashed out with my uninjured leg and it connected. The alien staggered back and with a strength born of pure fear I pulled myself up and into the opening. Acutely aware that the alien could climb I scuttled backwards, thrashing about so that I could see the entrance, moving on my elbows, pushing with my feet. Too soon I came up against solid wall. A ragged cry of dismay left me. The alien's head appeared in the opening, only three feet away.

I closed my eyes.

The sound of claws gouging into stone made me open them again. In disbelief I watched as the alien struggled—and failed—to fit itself within my haven. Several minutes passed while it attempted again and again to contort its body, to shrink in upon itself to reach me. Finally it gave one last, menacing hiss before dropping away from view.

I lay there, crying in eerie silence, listening to the sound of the alien pacing the floor below. I could barely feel the fingers of my right hand. I didn't bother looking at my leg where the alien had seized me—I didn't want to know the extent of the damage. My only solace was in the fact that I wouldn't die infected by the aliens, that I wouldn't be their host. Instead I would die here in this small hole, alone, yes, but wholly human. I could no longer hold my head up, and it lolled back to rest against the stone. I clutched at my shoulder with my left hand; blood welled slowly over my fingers. In the center of me had settled a core of ice and cold tendrils were drifting ever so gently throughout my body, numbing me. I concentrated on the racing of my heart, and as it began to slow I felt drowsy and weak. I didn't fight as my eyelids descended, flickering, nor did I panic as my hearing faded until all I could hear were my own languid thoughts.

This isn't so bad.

The pyramid moved then.

The stone all around me trembled, and for one horrifying moment I thought that my haven would shrink and crush me, grind my body to a pulp. Instead I watched as a slab of stone rose up to block the opening I had come through. Lost in sudden blackness, I breathed hard and fast, for this was an effective tomb. And then the stone at my head began to shift, began to sink. I twisted about, whimpering in pain, to see that I had access to a new chamber. This opening was set only a couple feet from the floor, and the room itself seemed strangely familiar. I didn't dare leave the small shaft until I was entirely certain it was safe and so for long, minutes I simply lay there listening and staring while blood from my wounds seeped through my clothing to become uncomfortably cool. Finally I crawled forth, and tumbled weakly from the opening to land in a heap on the floor.

I couldn't move for a time. My impact with the ground had jarred every hurting piece of me. I drifted for a while in a haze of suffering. When I could move without fear of blacking out I came first to my knees and then, shakily, to my feet. One hand fisted over my bleeding shoulder, I took greater notice of my surroundings. This was another hall, decorated again on both sides with towering statues of both the creatures I was currently imprisoned with. Overwhelming familiarity washed over me—I knew I'd been here before. A second later I realized this was the room where Max had met his death, the room where we had stumbled upon Celtic and the other, now dead predator. While the shape had changed somewhat, I was positive this was the place.

And if Max's body was still here ….

I began to move, limping awkwardly past the stone figurines and feeling the weight of their granite gazes. Every step hurt, but I bit my lip and continued. Max and Weyland had both been carrying our first aid supplies. I caught sight of a human leg from beyond a massive block of obsidian rock. Almost weeping in relief, I sank down beside the corpse. No longer was Max impaled by Celtic's spear, but the grid pattern of blood on his bald head and his terrified, frozen expression were both testaments to what he had endured in his final moments. I steadfastly avoided looking at his face and instead rummaged through all his pockets, all his clothing. The first aid supplies I found in his large vest pocket and my sense of relief was almost debilitating. I placed them all on the floor before me and picked through them. Two rolls of gauze, a needle and suture for emergency stitching, a bottle of sterilizing fluid, several full syringes, three packets of antiseptic pads, a roll of adhesive tape, and a bottle of aspirin.

Thank you, I whispered silently to whatever had granted me this miracle. Struggling painfully with my two shirts, I managed to expose the hole in my shoulder. Doing so, I realized how fortunate I was that the alien that had impaled me had been young—had it been an adult its larger tail would have punctured something important. As far as I could tell, the bones weren't broken, but the muscles … gritting my teeth, I opened the bottle of sterilizing fluid and poured it over the wound. My scream was muffled as I bit down hard on my lip, the tang of blood sharp in my mouth. I doubled over, panting. I repeated the process three more times before trying with violently trembling hands to reach the back of the wound with the fluid. There was no way I could get it all, but finally the bottle was empty, and I let it fall.

It took me long moments to recover enough from that to be able to grasp the gauze firmly and not drop it. I ripped it off in swaths and placed them one by one over the injury before securing it in place with an excess of tape. The backside of the wound was much harder to bind, and by the time I was finished tears of both frustration and pain stained my cheeks. It wasn't a decent job, but it would do. It would have to.

Shoulder dealt with, I turned my attention to my leg. As I rolled up the leg of my pants it pulled the dried blood away from my skin and I hissed. Upon further inspection I realized the damage from the young alien's claws was nowhere near as bad as I'd feared, amounting to long scrapes. One of them still bled., I poured what little was left of the sterilizing fluid over it and gasped at the burning sensation. That done, I set to work covering the scrapes with gauze before rolling my pant legs back down. I turned my attention then to the small collection of syringes.

Weyland had explained them to us before we had departed. They were a cocktail of painkillers and antibiotics, to be used only in case of emergency. I'd also used these before when on the ice with an injured person. They often meant the difference between survival and death. I removed the cap from one of them and prepped it. I had no trouble finding a vein in my arm, because they were standing out vividly against my flesh. The pinprick of the needle in my flesh seemed like nothing in relation to everything else I had done, and when the syringe was empty I let it fall and batted at the small blood drop left over with another piece of gauze.

I gathered what remained of the supplies and shoved them in any pocket they would fit in. The next order of business was to secure weapons from Max's body. The assault rifle he held had been damaged severely by Celtic's mesh net, and besides that fact I had no idea how to use it. I found in a hidden hip holster a grey automatic pistol. After some fumbling I managed to eject the magazine and saw that it contained a full round. I felt along the edge of his thigh, having seen a protrusion and found that beneath his clothing he had a sophisticated pump action shotgun that rode in a thigh holster. Removing it was an ordeal as the fabric of his pants proved difficult to rip. Finally I located a military issue knife sheathed in his boot which I used to slice open the cloth in order to secure the shotgun.

I had only a vague inkling how to use it. It wasn't as heavy as I was expecting and after locating the safety and I checked to see if there were any rounds in the chamber. There weren't, so I shucked one into place and felt immediately much safer. I had no idea whether either the pistol or the shotgun would do me any good against the aliens, but at least now I had the opportunity to find out. I stood then, testing my injured leg and finding it well enough to support weight. I shoved the pistol in the waistband of my pants and decided to carry the shotgun out in the open. The knife I opted to leave behind. My body still hurt in a million different ways but I had a sense of renewed determination now, for I had made it through situations that by all rights I should have died in and I had survived. Yes, the reason for that was mostly due to dumb luck, but I was alive, and I dearly wanted to stay that way.

And so, injuries patched and newly armed, I began my trek again.

.x.

The painkillers acted fast and soon I was walking with only an echo of the pain I'd been experiencing a short time before. Driven by my new determination I made my way once again through the labyrinthine twists and turns of the temple When my ears suddenly detected the sound of battle and the distinctive noise of Scar's cannon firing, I altered my course and made the best bee-line I could towards them.

And against all odds, I found the battle.

Rounding a corner I found myself just beyond a cavernous room, with a ceiling that soared high enough to be hidden in darkness. Scar was there, yes, but so was Celtic, and the two were fighting back to back against three adult aliens. Scar's cannon was no longer firing but I could see the smoking corpse of another alien not far away. He was wielding now his spear, the spear decorated with the trophy of my kill. I watched as he drove it through one of the aliens with enough force to pin it securely to the wall. More frenzied movement drew my eyes as Celtic went down swiftly beneath the weight of an alien and came up just as fast, throwing it from him while at the same time slicing its underside open with a fierce swipe of his wrist blades. Acid blood spewed everywhere, but the huge predator whirled aside and came face to face with me.

For only a moment we regarded each other. Scar was locked in a struggle with the last alien. When Celtic brought his shuriken up to bear, blades extended, I reacted the way I had to. I raised the shotgun and stared at him, terrified, over the barrel. As he brought his arm up in an arc in preparation to throw I pulled the trigger. The tremendous kick sent me stumbling into the wall behind me. The green luminance of the hunter's blood spread swiftly from the hole I'd made in his upper torso, and he took two steps to the side before throwing his head back and letting loose a savage scream. From where he stood, removing his spear from the last alien corpse, Scar swiveled around. Seeing me, seeing Celtic, he dropped the spear and ran toward us.

Celtic hurled the shuriken. I dove back behind the wall, cringing as the weapon embedded itself deep into the wall where I had just been standing. I hear another roar of rage and did the only thing I could think of doing that didn't wind up with me dead.

I scrambled to my feet and bolted back the way I'd come.

.x.