Alien: Isolation

Chapter Twenty Three: The Nest

The first thing that Ripley noticed as she stepped onto the catwalks once the service lift came to a stop, was how massive the chamber that housed the Sevastopol's Reactor was. She supposed that it had to be, given the size of both the sub-cores and the central core itself, as well as the power demands of a station on the scale of this one, but that didn't stop her from feeling uneasy while looking over the guardrail into the darkness below.

The catwalks were grated steel like the floors of the engineering section, but aside from the timed flashes of lightning generated by the firing of the two sub-cores, the only illumination came from a few work-lights at intervals along the guardrails. There were also some active control panels at access stations near each sub-core, which the catwalks split up to reach by wrapping around the central core itself, rejoining around the back where the access elevator to the lower levels was located.

It was still a decent walk to get all the way across, which gave Ripley time to think about how she was going to handle the situation once she got down there. First, she would have to find the problem, which she hoped was something simple like a few broken sensor-heads or something, but then she would need tools. That shouldn't be too difficult to manage, since most places that required regular maintenance kept at least an emergency toolkit somewhere close by, so the biggest problem would be keeping away from the industrial Working Joes.

"I'm almost at the elevator, Ricardo." Ripley said as she moved around the central core. "No Androids yet, but can you give me any kind of readings on the lower levels?"

"Sorry, Ripley, but I'm getting nothing from here." Ricardo's voice replied. "It might be interference from the reactor, but my console says that the whole sensor network down there is, well… down."

Wonderful, she thought while approaching the elevator. So, not only did she have to descend into the reactor's lower levels all by herself, but she also had to go in blindly, and with her luck there would be about a hundred of those God damn Androids waiting to ambush her the moment the doors opened. Well, at least she still had the shotgun, even though there weren't a lot of shells left for it once it was completely reloaded. In fact, once she consolidated the rest into one pocked, Ripley realized that there were only enough to reload it one more time, and that was it.

"Great." She said to herself after pushing the call button. "That's just fucking great."

At least this time Apollo wouldn't have any choice but to stand down once the sensors were back online, and the stupid machine saw that the creature was no longer onboard the station. This thought made Ripley feel a little better when the doors opened and she stepped into the elevator, quickly pushing the button so that she could get down there and bring this whole nightmare to an end as fast as possible. The elevator moved slowly once the doors closed, as if purposely trying to make her feel more anxious about where she was going, but then it came to a stop, and suddenly she appreciated the slowness when the doors finally opened.

"What… in… the… fuck?" She whispered at what she saw.

The corridor started out normal enough, and was even well lit for once, but there was a couple inches of water across the whole floor as if something had flooded down there. This wasn't what caught her attention, though; about thirty feet into the corridor, the whole area changed. There was some kind of texture along the walls and ceiling, a sort of purplish-gray substance, but it was patterned almost like ribs attached to a spine. The lights were mostly positioned between these 'ribs', allowing Ripley to see that there was something else between some of them as well. Something that seemed to be interweaved into the substance.

She had to get closer to see what it was that was, but once there, Ripley gasped and jumped back, losing her balance and falling so that she was sitting in the water. It was a person! A Human Being was tucked down into a kind of sitting position in between the rib-structures, with what looked like thinner tendrils of the same substance holding their arms and legs so that he couldn't move. The man looked like he had been dead for a while, but his face was twisted into an expression of agony, and there was a strange wound on his chest. It looked like an exit wound, with how the bones underneath were bent outward, but there was no entry wound on the back… just like the Patient Zero she had seen in San Christobal.

And he was not the only one. There were more… lots more… dozens, in fact… both men and women, all bound in similar fashion, although some had been left in a standing position. They were all dead, though, and there were these strange kind of… pods that were sitting around, one positioned nearby each body. They were like a brownish, leathery sack with nothing inside, and the top flaps open. It kind of reminded her of the ones that Marlow had described on the planet… the one where that little spider-thing jumped out and latched itself to the face of one of his crew.

"Ricardo… I think I found them." She whispered, slowly getting to her feet. "The missing people, they're here… in this… place. It's like the place that Marlow described; those pods, and these people all look like that woman I saw in the hospital."

"Shit! Ripley, you have to get out of there!" The Deputy's voice exclaimed. "That creature came out of Patient Zero, that's how this whole thing started! Ripley, get out of there right now!"

What Ricardo was saying didn't make any sense. She already knew that the creature had come out of that woman and gotten really big, but even so, Ripley had personally sent that monster to its death in the gas giant's atmosphere. She was just about to argue this to him, when her words stopped as the elevator doors closed before it started back up toward the catwalks. Oh shit, she thought as she realized that the Working Joe from engineering must've followed her, and now she started looking for a place to hide.

Forced to move farther into the structure, the room opened up a bit, and Ripley was able to find shelter by hiding behind an exposed control station. By the time she got there, the elevator had made it to the top, and she was trying to think of how to best deal with the Android, when it started back down a couple seconds later. If it was the same one, then it was heavily damaged, and couldn't possibly take much more punishment, but if it was a different one, or not alone… then she had a problem. Either way, the elevator had reached the bottom now, and even though she couldn't see it from where she was, she could hear the heavy footsteps approaching once the doors opened.

But it wasn't a Working Joe of any model that came walking into the open room a moment later, and Ripley couldn't even get herself to breathe when she saw the black figure with the elongated head, grinning teeth, and spear-like tail dragging through the shallow water on the floor. It was the creature! Wait, no… this one was different… its body was identical, but its tail was intact, and it did not appear to be injured in any way. So did that mean… that it was a different creature?

It was also dragging something behind it; a dead person… no, he was breathing as it pulled him along by the ankle, so merely unconscious. The creature then took him over to an empty place between the rib-structures, stuffed him inside, and then began to excrete a kind of dark liquid from its mouth. The substance sprayed over the man's body, mostly his arms and legs, and seemed to quickly harden so that it was like the tendrils that restrained all the others. Once this was finished, the creature turned away and walked deeper into the structure, with Ripley making sure that it was gone before creeping out of hiding.

Ricardo was right, she had to get out of there, but she couldn't just leave the man trapped like that. So she stayed crouched down, trying to make as little noise as possible while going through the water. There was a pod next to him as well, but the top was different, looking like it was sealed up, which was probably a good thing since she would need time to both wake him up and free him. The man was out pretty good, so Ripley decided to try freeing him first, but the hardened substance was a lot harder than it looked.

"Ripley, are you out yet?" Ricardo asked. "I'm not tracking you yet. Ripley, are you out?"

"No, not yet." She whispered while pulling on the tendrils. "I found a survivor, just give me a second."

Now, Ripley considered herself to be pretty strong for a woman her size, but no matter how much she pulled and pulled, the dark substance just wouldn't give. The task was made even more difficult by the fact that she had to constantly be on the lookout for the creature, but now the man was starting to wake up. His head moved around at first, then he groaned before opening his eyes. He seemed disoriented at first, but quickly realized that something was wrong when he tried to move.

"What?!" He exclaimed, looking around. "Where am I?! What happened?!"

"Shhh!" Ripley whispered harshly, putting her hand over his mouth. "Shhh! Be quiet, damn it! Help me get you out…

Suddenly something moved behind her, and Ripley was scared that it was the creature, but it was the pod that was moving when she turned around. The top of it was slowly folding downward into four flaps, and through the partially transparent membrane at the bottom, something could be seen fluttering around inside. Then it moved, traveling upward, and making her gasp as it's long, boney, finger-like appendages grabbed onto the edge to pull itself up. Then it leapt forward, making her gasp and fall backwards as its spider-like body and long ridge-covered tail flew over her.

The trapped man started to scream as it landed next to him, but was cut off when the little spider-thing jumped onto his face. It's 'fingers' wrapped around his head, while its tail did the same to his throat, squeezing tightly so that he started to gag and cough. This sound was also quickly cut off, and all Ripley could do was stare terrified as his struggles slowly stopped a few seconds later. This was just what Marlow said happened to his crewmember, and that meant… no, she had to get it off of him.

Getting up, she grabbed the spider-thing's body, and tried to pull it off of him, but the fingers and tail tightened so that she couldn't. The only option left was the shotgun, so she was aiming so that it would just be grazed and hopefully scared off, when it became Ripley who was scared. Because down the corridor leading further into this… nest… was the creature. It just stood there, staring at her and grinning just like the other one had done… and it wasn't alone. Two more of the black nightmares were walking up behind it, and they too just stood there once they noticed her.

"Oh, no." Ripley whispered while starting to back away. "No, no, no, no, no."

She then made a run for it, sprinting back toward the elevator as the creatures pursued.