Alien: Isolation

Chapter Twenty Eight: Cascade Failure

Dimly aware of being carried down the corridor away from the Bridge, Ripley struggled to keep her eyes open, but was unable to do so for more than a second at a time before everything would go black again. Each time she forced them to open, the area around her was different, but where was Marlow taking her? She was facing backwards, mostly looking at the floor, meaning that the Captain had her over his shoulder. Her whole body had gone numb as well, aside from the throbbing pain in her head, but then the ride was suddenly over when Marlow roughly tossed her down like a sack of potatoes.

Instead of hitting the floor, she only fell a couple feet, onto a metal workbench of some kind. It was getting a little easier to hold her eyes open now, but her body was still barely responding, making it easy for Marlow to pull her wrists above her head. It was a struggle for Ripley to hold her head up enough to see that the Captain was handcuffing her to the upper frame of the bench, leaving her in a sort of sitting position when he stepped back.

"Hope those aren't too tight, sweetheart." He said, knowing damn well that they were hurting her. "A little parting gift from our friends at the Colonial Marshals."

Turning her eyes from him, Ripley was able to see that they had moved down into the lower levels of the ship, and from the massive feature that dominated the whole back of the room, she realized that they were inside the Anesidora's Fusion Reactor Chamber. Taylor was there as well, although she didn't look like she was handling the situation very well. The poor girl was shaking like a leaf; obviously scared out of her wits, standing over by the controls. Her glasses were gone, probably broken when Marlow hit her on the Bridge, and there were a few more bruises forming on her face, as if he had hit her a few more times after that.

"Okay, ladies, here's how we're gonna do this." Marlow explained, turning to Taylor. "Since little Amanda here doesn't wanna be a team player, it now falls to you to help me finish the sequence. So you're going to walk over to that console on the left by the fusion core, and you're gonna do exactly what I tell you… because if you don't, then sweetheart over here is going to have a really bad day."

"Don't help him, Taylor." Ripley ordered defiantly. "If you help him overload the fusion core, then we're all dead any…

Ripley's words became a cry of pain as the Captain grabbed her by the front of the shirt pulling her off the table so that the handcuffs dug heavily into her wrists. He then grabbed her by the hair, yanked her head back so that she was bent backwards over the table, and shoved the barrel of his revolver so far down her throat that she started gagging on it.

"No, don't!" Taylor begged, stepping toward them. "Marlow, please, don't!"

"Move over to the console, Taylor." Marlow said, pulling back the hammer with his thumb. "I won't tell you again."

Doing what he said, Taylor quickly moved over to the console, and the Captain slowly un-cocked the hammer. He then pulled it out of Ripley's mouth so fast that she started coughing, and wiped it off on her cheek before stepping over to his own console. Marlow immediately began to enter commands, while telling Taylor what to do on her end, leaving Ripley pretty much helpless to stop what was happening.

She pulled and struggled against the metal frame she was bound to, but neither it, nor the handcuffs would budge… not that she really expected them to. Now the Anesidora's fusion core was beginning to power up, crackling and sparking with all of the built-up energy that had been diverted to it, and if it was allowed to continue…

"Marlow, stop, please, I'm begging you!" She yelled, pulling again on the cuffs. "You don't have to do this! We can contact the Torrens, and everyone can escape together! Marlow, please don't kill us!"

"Shut up, Ripley, just shut the fuck up!" He yelled, stomping over to her after pushing a last button. "You're already dead, don't you get it?! Just like Foster… just like everyone who comes into contact with those creatures... she was my wife, and I had to watch her die, but now I can…

Now it was Marlow's turn to have his words cut off, since while he was screaming at Ripley, Taylor had picked up a large wrench from the floor. In a move that Ripley would never have expected, the timid company girl came up behind the Captain, and swung the wrench into the back of his head with all her strength. Marlow never even knew what hit him, as he collapsed to the floor with blood pooling around his head, and then Taylor dropped the wrench. She stared down at him with eyes wide, and then she stepped back while putting her shaking hands over her mouth, as if suddenly realizing that she had killed a man.

"Taylor!" Ripley yelled as the fusion core continued to charge. "Taylor, snap out of it!"

The terrified girl remained there, just staring at Marlow's body for several seconds, but then she gasped and looked around as if suddenly remembering what was happening around her. The next thing she did was run to Ripley to make sure that she was all right, but the important thing was getting the key to her handcuffs… which Taylor didn't like at all, since it meant digging through a dead man's pockets.

"Ripley… I can't." She said, shying away from Marlow. "I… I killed him… I can't."

"Taylor, listen to me." Ripley replied, trying to stay calm. "I know you're scared right now, but I can stop the overload, okay? I can save us, but I need your help… just be brave for me a little longer, and then we can all go home… can you do that for me, Taylor?"

The terrified girl swallowed hard, and looked like she was going to vomit, but she managed to search through the Captain's pockets until the key was found. Ripley sighed with relief as Taylor unlocked the cuffs, and then took a second to rub her aching wrists before moving up to the console that had been previously used by Marlow.

"Okay, we have to move fast." She explained. "Open the fusion systems on your end so that I can access the secondary feedback buffers."

"W… what?" Taylor asked, looking down at her console. "I… I don't… what?"

There really wasn't time to walk her through the process step by step, but if the excess energy wasn't drained off from the fusion core, nothing would stop the overload. All this, in addition to the whole ship shaking as a result of the buildup, was making it really hard to keep calm, but if Ripley panicked, then everyone would die. So, trying to be as basic as she could, she told Taylor how to activate the auxiliary generator in order to get power to the emergency systems.

So far it was going good; the auxiliary generator came online, and then so did the feedback buffers a few seconds later, but something was wrong. Ripley pushed the button to activate the cooldown sequence, but the buffers wouldn't engage. She pushed it again, and again, but nothing happened. Meanwhile, the fusion core continued to power-up, causing streaks of lightning to begin striking the walls, while dozens of warnings started to flash across the consoles.

"Primary System collapse?" Ripley read aloud as her mouth ran dry. "Total System-wide cascade failure… oh fuck, Marlow rigged it! Taylor, he's forced the overload, the ship's gonna…

Her words were stopped as a blast of energy was released from the fusion core, throwing Ripley sideways, where she crashed right through the table that she had been handcuffed to. Her ears were ringing, and a sudden dizziness made her unable to get up, but as these symptoms faded, she realized that the room was on fire. Flames were slowly spreading across the walls and through the hissing pipes, while the fusion core continued to overload… but all of this was forgotten after what she saw next.

"Taylor!" Ripley yelled as she ran to her. "Taylor, come on, we have to get out of here!"

She had apparently been thrown across the room as well, and collapsed on the floor near the wall. But when Ripley turned her over, she gasped when she realized that her hand was now covered in blood from the back of Taylor's head. There was a blood-stained impact mark on the wall above them, and Ripley was frantically looking around for an emergency kit or something, when Taylor coughed a little.

"Ripley?" She whispered, looking at her. "I want… to… go… home…

"Taylor?" Ripley asked as the girl stopped breathing. "Taylor?! No! No, Taylor, no, no, no! Taylor!"

Then the whole ship shook again, and she remembered the severity of the situation. The Anesidora was shaking violently as the flames continued to spread, and now there were alarms blaring all throughout. It pained Ripley to just leave Taylor there, but the fusion core was only minutes away from complete overload, which meant that she had to move, now. So she jumped up and sprinted away from the core, running back down the corridor as tiny explosions began erupting from the floor and walls.

Suddenly there was a large explosion from the wall just ahead, creating a wall of intense flames that she was just barely able to avoid running into. It was impossible to continue on this way, so she turned and ran through the next door, which led to an upward ramp. The Anesidora shook again, making Ripley fall against a part of the guardrail that had a flame shooting onto it, making her cry out from burning her hands on the red-hot metal.

The explosions and shakings were getting worse now, but the good news was that she had made it back to the level of the ship that she had landed on, meaning that the ambulance shuttle had to be somewhere nearby. So she sprinted, traveling down the only path available, due to walls of flame being erected in almost every direction that she tried. This ship was like a maze; the corridors twisting and turning until she had no idea where she was, and panic finally started setting in as she desperately looked around for something that looked familiar.

The flames were still spreading, and now the Anesidora was rocking to the side, so much in fact, that Ripley was sent tumbling down the corridor as if it were a hole. Screaming, and covering her eyes as she fell right toward a wall of fire, she felt intense heat only for a moment before crashing into something that was a lot softer than she would have expected. It was a chair of some kind, and past that was a series of control panels with what looked like a flight-stick… and that was when she realized that she had fallen right into the ambulance shuttle.

It was difficult to get into the seat and strap in, being that the Anesidora's gravity had turned sideways, but soon she had managed it. With a pull of the lever next to her, she locked and sealed the door, and then pressed the button that would begin the launch sequence. Slowly, the shuttle's engines fired, launching her away from the doomed ship as it closed in on Sevastopol station.

Less than a minute later, the Anesidora exploded.