Alien: Isolation

Chapter Twelve: Waits and Marlow

A little disoriented when she awoke, Ripley had hoped that everything that had happened since arriving at Sevastopol had just been a horrible dream, since she was now lying on some kind of hospital bed. Yes, that had to be it; she had been doing a routine job, when something fell and smacked her on the head, knocking her out, and everything, the androids, the lunatics, the creature… all of it had just been a nightmare. Of course, this hope was shattered when she looked at the far wall across from her, and saw a propaganda poster that read:

COLONIAL MARSHALS

SEVASTOPOL STATION

"I gave you a clear directive not to land on this station, damn it!" A voice yelled from outside the room. "And now you wanna blame me for the Torrens getting damaged by one of my traps?!"

"And I told you, Marshal Waits, we didn't receive your message." Samuels' voice replied. "You should've stood down from whatever… detonation you had planned, the moment you spotted us."

As the argument continued, it now clicked in Ripley's mind that the explosion in the hospital had been from a trap set for the creature… as had been the explosion that damaged the Torrens. To be fair, the Marshal had sent a warning transmission, but that Apollo computer had blocked it as well as all external communications, but that didn't mean that she wasn't going to give this Marshal Waits a piece of her mind.

She was feeling a little better as she sat up; the ringing in her ears and dizziness having completely faded away, and the hospital bed that she was in, turned out to be a basic life-support unit that was commonly issued to law-enforcement agencies like this one. There was also a second bed, where an unconscious Taylor was also resting. She appeared to be asleep, but her wound had been tended to, probably thanks to the trauma kit that Ripley had taken from San Christobal, so at least that much had been accomplished.

There was a shower toward the back of this room, which she desperately needed, since she was covered with blood, grease, and… other things… and someone had left her a clean jumpsuit as well, so she undressed and got under the water as the conversation outside continued. The water running over her head stopped her from hearing parts of it, but some Ripley could make out.

"So what is going on around here, Marshal?" Samuels' voice continued. "Where are your security forces?"

"You're lookin at them." Waits answered. "We're all that's left; that damn computer cut off comms, so between the looters, and everything else fucked up that's been happening around here, we're lucky that there's this many of us left."

She wished that there was more time to enjoy the flowing water, but as Verlaine had told her, there was only a total of twenty-four hours that the Torrens could remain in transit, so Ripley had to act fast. Drying off and getting dressed, she walked out of the room to find Samuels still talking with an older man who was most likely Marshal Waits. A conversation that was interrupted when they noticed her approaching.

"Well, well, if it isn't the one who ruined the trap." Waits said, adjusting his hat. "It was supposed to take the bait we left in the middle of the reception desk, but thanks to you, the thing barely got burned at all."

"Bait?" Ripley asked. "What could you have possibly used for… no, I don't wanna know. But I have seen the creature… what is it?"

Now there were a few conflicting theories in response to her question, but one fact remained constant. They believed that it was some kind of parasite that was brought onboard by a man named Marlow, the Captain of the Anesidora. That was the name of the ship that she had seen on Patient Zero's charts, and apparently there had been something inside of that woman… that wanted out pretty badly. From the little bit that Waits could tell her, the creature had started out really small, but that had changed very quickly over a short time.

"I knew we should've quarantined that ship right away." Waits continued. "But they brought in that missing flight recorder, and just sort of mentioned the woman's sickness once we agreed to take it."

"Hold on a second." Ripley interrupted. "They brought in the flight recorder? I thought it was one of the station's work crews."

Samuels seemed just as surprised as she was at this revelation, but there was a little bit of good news on the side. Apparently, Captain Marlow had been locked up once the trouble with the creature began, so she would be able to at least find out where the Nostromo's flight recorder had been found, but Waits was more concerned about getting him to hand over the remote-flight controls of the Anesidora so that they could bring it in and get the hell off the station. For now, though, Waits and his Deputy, a smaller man named Ricardo, were working on the latest scheme to get rid of the creature, which gave Ripley a chance to talk to Marlow.

"Hey, not you, Samuels." Waits said, stopping them as they started toward the cells. "Apollo's locked itself down for some reason, so I want you to head down to Android Processing, and find a way to get transit to its core back online. Then I want you to find out why it killed communications, and do whatever it takes to get that God damn machine to unfuck itself."

"Very well." Samuels replied. "Hopefully it's nothing but a simple glitch that I can repair… will you and Taylor be all right here, Ripley?"

"Don't worry about Taylor." She replied. "I'll take care of her, just… that creature's still out there, so try not to draw any attention to yourself."

Ripley hoped that since he was a Synthetic, the creature wouldn't notice him at all, since it probably only killed for food. Then he was gone, and as much as she didn't want him to go alone, there was still the matter of Marlow. So she continued toward the one occupied holding cell, and pushed the intercom button.

"Are you Captain Marlow?" She asked the heavyset man sitting on the bench against the wall. "Of the Anesidora?"

"Maybe… and maybe not." He replied without looking up. "Who the hell wants to know?"

Ripley told him that she was from the company, and he laughed a little before making a joke about them being in such a hurry to pick up their empty box. He stopped joking once she told him that her mother was on the ship that the flight recorder came from when it vanished fifteen years before, and for a moment he seemed genuinely sorry to say that he never found the Nostromo, just the recorder.

"Well, you sure as hell found something else." She continued. "What was it, and where did it come from?"

"I guess there's no harm in telling you that." Marlow replied. "You'll never be able to do anything about it without my ship, and I want out of here… maybe we can deal?"

Ripley's answer was for him to just start talking, and what he began to relay to her was a story about discovering a signal that led them to the planet LV-426. The Nostromo's flight recorder was found on the way, but its own homing signal didn't match the one they were tracking, so they landed on the rock, and followed the signal through a mother of a dust storm… right to a wreck of a ship that looked ancient.

The only crew they found onboard was a giant in what was probably the pilot's chair, but he looked just as ancient as the ship. It was quickly discovered that someone else had been there recently, maybe the Nostromo, who knows? But then they discovered a massive chamber underneath the wreck… a chamber that was filled with some kind of giant pods. As far as he could figure, the pods were some kind of eggs, and one opened when Foster got close.

He had been on his way down while this was going, and he warned Foster to stay back, but it was too late. There was some kind of weird creature inside the egg, and it latched itself onto her face; burning right through her helmet with some kind of natural acid before rendering her unconscious. The creature had fallen off her face on its own and died before the ship could get underway, so then they put Foster into stasis, and high-tailed it to the nearest station, which happened to be Sevastopol.

Next thing Marlow knew, Foster was dead, and something was running amok around the station. Of course, Waits had blamed him for it, since technically the thing had come from his ship, and that was just about everything that he was willing to tell her until he was let out of the cell. Ripley offered to try and get him out in exchange for the auto-flight codes to his ship, and he just went silent after telling her that she knew where to find him.

"Marshal Waits." Ricardo suddenly said excitedly. "My board in the Sys/Tec Tower just lit up like a Christmas Tree. The creature's there!"

"Okay, good job." Waits replied as they looked at the monitors. "Set up Plan B."

"Whatever's happening, I want in." Ripley said as she walked over to join them. "No matter where it came from, we have to do something about that creature."

Waits was actually pretty eager to have a volunteer, so while Ricardo programmed the board to do… something… Ripley followed the Marshal over to a nearby storage room, where she was kind of confused when he gave her something that looked like a modified plasma torch. Turns out that this awkward device was actually a make-shift flamethrower, since the creature was an animal, and animals were afraid of fire. This made sense, with how violently the creature had reacted to being set on fire in San Christobal, but as far as just being an animal… she wasn't so sure.

After all, she had seen now intelligent it could be, and how it had targeted her specifically… and the way it grinned… maybe it was better to not think of it this way, and instead she collected up her other tools in preparation to head out. Ricardo also gave her a radio headset so that they could stay in contact, and since the whole station was wired with motion detectors, he might even be able to warn her if the creature was approaching… as long as the thing was moving, that is.

"Take a transit car to the Sys/Tech Tower while Ricardo finishes setting up." Waits ordered. "I'll coordinate from here, and give you the details once we're ready."

Oh great, Ripley thought as she shook her head and walked away. Another chivalrous man who was willing to send one lone woman to do the dirty work. She wondered if this was what life had been like for her mother, as well; doing all of the work while the men stayed behind where it was safe.

"Okay, Ripley, comm check." Waits' voice said in her receiver as she left the bureau. "You reading me?"

"Yeah, I hear you." She answered back. "I'll signal again once I'm in the other tower."

Thankfully the transit car was right around the corner from the Marshal's Bureau, so it was only seconds later that she was inside, and the car started to move… back to the first tower that she had been to upon arrival… and hopefully a way to kill that damn creature.