Author's Note: It's hard to believe how popular this fic has become in just a couple of short months. Anyway, nostalgia over, here's the next chapter.
Alec delicately lowered a chunk of SCP into Chrome's jaws, firmly believing he was about to lose fingers. He soon found his fears were unfounded as the praetorian, instead, allowed him to let go and withdraw said digits before closing her jaws.
He gave an audible sigh of relief. The next ten minutes followed the same pattern with Alec slowly growing to accept that the praetorian was, at the very least, not willing to harm him at expense to it's own well being.
Despite himself he was growing quite attached to the praetorian, despite the fact they couldn't even have a conversation, it was probably the fact he hadn't seen another human in almost a year now. Absentmindedly he patted the smooth surface of the xenomorph's skull. Hand pulling back as the touch elicited a growl.
Sighing deeply he moved over to the computer, archiving the recordings for today. It was a bit early to do so but he wanted to extract the sound data so he could add the food related words to the crude xenomorph-human dictionary he had slowly been constructing.
Chrome was quiet behind him, at least for a while before a gentle growling came up from behind him. Startled Alec spun in his chair. He needn't have worried, the praetorian wasn't moving beyond the rise and fall of it's torso as it breathed. Still the growling persisted.
It took Alec almost two minutes to figure out what the reasons for the sound was. Chrome was snoring.
Not having slept in over a day, Alec decided it would be a good idea to follow her example. He carefully locked the door and moved back to the boiler room where his sleeping bag was. Tossing off shoes and other bits of clothing which might damage it, Alec climbed into his sleeping bag and was asleep in minutes.
Piusnex was slowly getting groggier and groggier, despite doing nothing for over a day, she could feel the tiredness washing over her like a wave against a rock. And eventually the waves always won.
She was aware of the human over by it's machine, that strange rhythmic clicking from where his fingers were touching a device. The sound almost hypnotising her.
She'd been reasonably pleased with the meal, the fibrous meat(?) the human had given her had been of reasonable quality and flavour despite the indignity of having to be fed. For a brief moment she'd considered taking off the human's fingers, it would have taken a split second to close her jaws around the digits. Self-interest won out over instinct and petty revenge. Maiming the human would achieve nothing except perhaps get her killed.
Now there was a point, why hadn't the human killed her? To be honest she didn't have a clue. When she'd first woken she'd expected some form of dissection, it had happened before, admittedly not to her, but she'd seen the bodies.
It wasn't just the human's odd behaviour she was wondering about, her own judgement was also quite questionable at the moment, like when the human had stroked the top of her head. She'd purred. The memory alone was enough to make her blush, if she were physically able to blush. It was all just so confusing. The human had saved her life. The human was keeping her here against her will. The human was making no attempts to harm her in any way. The whole situation was ridiculous.
No longer about to hold a coherent thought, Piusnex drifted off to sleep.
Unlike the inhabitants of the power plant – willing or otherwise – Yeythwei was struggling to sleep, the yautja was trying to figure out how it had almost been killed by a lone ooman and couple of praetorians. The ooman should never have qualified as a threat, the praetorians should never have caught him off guard. So what had made them so dangerous?
It wasn't the accuracy of the ooman and it's weapon, he'd killed Soft Meat that were far more skilled. It wasn't the ferocity, strength and speed of the praetorians, after all, he'd killed three of them already. The only logical explanation was pure bad luck, except...
Sighing, the yautja rolled over in it's bunk, there was an answer somewhere, just on the very edge of his thoughts, but try as he might he just couldn't seem to reach it.
Tossing and turning still, his wounds making every movement a trial, Yeythwei tried to sleep.
The Queen hissed softly in the darkness of the hive. The hunt had gone well, the hive would stay fed for just another week longer.
But as all with all things over the last few days the good news was tempered with a hint of bad. The hunt had come across drones from another hive, starved and tired, they'd been easy prey for her own hive but still, the fact that another hive was desperate enough for food to foray into her territory spoke volumes for what was going on outside the hive's territories.
They'd been careful not to let the hive grow too large, to not kill to the point of excess, and their food supply had held out. But if more hives began to hunt here then that carefully maintained supply might die out. Steps would need to be taken to prevent further incursions.
Another small article of news also came to her attention, the device protecting the human's lair, as so industriously discovered by the late Piusnex, had not been on tonight. Perhaps it had broken.
Whatever the reason it meant the human was vulnerable, once the hive's territories were secure from outsiders it would be time to move in for the kill. No, the Queen carefully considered, not kill, capture, a smart host meant a smart xenomorph and you could never have enough smart xenomorphs...
Author's Note: And the thick plottens... Please read and review.