The Ss'sik'chtokiwij had a cracked, battered exoskeleton, heat blistered in parts, with many pieces of her body broken off, most notably the giant crown plate. A jagged asymmetrical sort of `tiara' topped with a lopsided fin on the left side was all that remained of that piece, and one of her smaller arms was gone.

Her scent seemed odd, but I could recognize that face anywhere. My tail thumped with joy. "Grandmother! You're alive!"

"No thanks to you," she growled. "What is this? You abandon me and my chamber of eggs on account of a scrawny little hooman and her ugly larva?" (1)

My tail laid flat. "I'm glad to see you too, Grandmother."

She sighed wearily, staring at my larvae. "And what's this you have here? A pair of great grand daughters I know nothing about?"

I smiled pleasantly, holding up one for her to examine. "This is Julia. The first Ss'sik'chtokiwij ever to be born without killing her host."

"I have heard rumors of others, but it's been a long time."

"It's not possible!" Newt cried. "It can't be! We shot her out an airlock!"

I frowned (2). "Again? Grandmother actually arrived on your planet because she got shot out an airlock..."

"Ripley got in a big machine, to rescue me from her! They fought each other, and Ripley knocked her into into space! Your grandma is supposed to be gone!"

"Our shells can withstand a lot of pressure."

Grandmother inhaled deeply, her scent pores flaring. "That larva is mine!"

"I will never be yours!" Newt shouted.

Suddenly all the pieces fit together. "You killed Rebecca!"

"Is that what you called the small hooman?" Grandmother purred.

"You!" Newt screamed, leaping from my shoulder. "You ruined my life! Why couldn't you let me drown in my cryo pod or something! I didn't want this!"

Grandmother flinched. "What is she talking about? I don't understand."

"Human beings can transfer their spirits into our bodies," I explained.

Grandmother frowned. "That's not possible."

"Possible or not, she believes it happened. And she's very upset about you killing the small child."

Grandmother took a deep breath, staring down at Newt. "Did she use the ssujmarrux?"

"The what?"

Grandmother opened her mouth, showing me her worms.

My jaw dropped. "I call those Wooby Worms."

"That's silly. They're ssujmarrux."

"Anyways," I said. "That's what she used."

Grandmother retreated from the larva in horror. "This is why a ssujmarrux is so seldom used! Its purpose is implanting memories into eggs, and bonding with larvae, not mingling with the puny brains of prey animals!

"I have heard of Ss'sik'chtokiwij going mad from such experimentations, thinking they are prey beasts and wandering aimlessly in jungles and desert wastes. They ate grass, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik!" she shook her head in disbelief. "And now I see one such as these in the flesh!"

"Its your fault!" Newt said. "I didn't ask to be born as this...thing!"

Grandmother shook her great head. "She really believes she is the hooman larva, doesn't she?"

"What if she really is one?" I asked. "At least, in spirit? I was able to travel into the body of the human larva named Sarah, controlling her body, experiencing what she felt..."

Grandmother bowed her head. "The Ss'sik'chtokiwij spirit is a mysterious thing. It could be possible."

"It isn't fair," Newt said. "I didn't want this body."

In a tone of exasperation, Grandmother sighed, "Child, I didn't want this either. I was only laying my egg!"

"You didn't have to lay it in me! I wasn't even a full grown adult! I hate you!"

"Newt," I scolded, prepared to lecture her on the merits of forgiving her enemy.

"You know that woman you hate so much?" Newt said to Grandmother. "The one that carried that `ugly larva' around? That woman is here, `grandma', and when she finds you, she's going to pull out the biggest gun she can and blow your brains all over this hallway. And I'm going to be there, laughing as you die, you, you, evil bitch!"

She burst into sobs, scampering back down the corridor.

Grandmother pointed her face in Julia's direction gesturing to the nearby room. "Great granddaughter, are you hungry? I have a couple carcasses, if you want a bite..."

Julia turned toward me questioningly.

I shook my head. "Those are intelligent beings. Children of God. It is wrong to eat them. I do not wish for you to repeat my failings."

"They are not alive anymore, mother. It would not hurt them."

"You bonded with David. What did that teach you?"

Julia paused and thought a moment. "A human carcass is placed in a box, and others weep over it and read speeches. The carcass has value." She bowed her head. "I am sorry, Great Grandmother. I must decline."

Grandmother shrugged her shoulder plates. "Suit yourself."

She sighed and shook her head. "Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik, far be it for me to tell you how to parent, but I cannot help but feel you do these things to spite me."

"Grandmother," I said. "Please do not take this personally. I would behave the same, even if you were not here. I am only following my conscience."

Grandmother purred in mockery. "Sure you are."

I decided to move on to other topics. "So, Grandmother, it is a very strange and miraculous turn of events for us both to meet here together. How did you get to be in this place?"

Grandma told me what happened (3).

"That adult creature with the curly hair, she angered me.! Enraged me! First she sets fire to my eggs, then she shoots all those damn boom booms into my egg sac. The pain! I wonder what that woman would think if I took one of her weapons and blew off that thing in the middle of her face! You can probably imagine how upset I got about it..."

"That does sound very painful," I agreed.

Grandmother continued her story. Julia laid flat on my shoulder, quietly listening. She had never met the big Ss'sik'chtokiwij before, so she was fascinated, interrupting the tale many times with questions about this or that thing she mentioned.

Incensed about the pain being inflicted upon her person, Grandmother chased the Ripley woman to an elevator, but the doors were already closing, so she ended up pulling them apart after the human had gone up, clinging to the bottom of the car.

At this point, several explosives went off. Grandmother pressed herself against the object she clung to, enduring the blasts of heat and pieces of flying debris with a steadily growing hatred swelling in her heart.

When Ripley emerged from her transport, Grandmother burst through the lift doors, charging after the woman, but then a flying vehicle came down just seconds before she could kill her.

Grandmother latched onto the spaceship's landing gear. If she hadn't stowed away in this fashion, she probably would have died. She described a great deal of noise, likely caused by a tremendous explosion. Of course she couldn't see much from that compartment.

Eventually the fatigue and monotony got to her, and she dozed off for a moment. I believe, during this time, she got transported inside the spacecraft of the Spacemarines.

She got awakened rather unpleasantly by the sudden jostling of the vehicle and the pinching landing gear. Already cranky, she took out her aggression on the nearest creature that ventured close to her compartment, the synthetic human.

"Naturally, those two hoomans fled like frightened animals," Grandmother said. "The adult female escaped me, but I discovered its larva hiding beneath the floor, so I went after that one first. I spent several minutes trying to hunt it down.

"The bigger curly haired female snarled something to me, and when I turned to look, I found she had put on a sort of exoskeleton, with long metal claws."

Although I didn't quite understand what Grandmother was going on about, I guessed that Ripley had found some sort of cargo loading machine, which she had managed to use, somewhat ingeniously in combat.

"We fought each other for awhile. Her exoskeleton was not a true one, with many vulnerable weak points, so I tried to pierce her skull with my suaakudsi.

"Then, all of a sudden, we both fell down a hole, that metal thing pressing me painfully to the bottom."

In other words, they had fallen into an airlock, wherein they had a very unpleasant scuffle, one eventually resulting in Grandmother being ejected into space.

The next part of her story didn't make sense to me, and she didn't explain it very well.

From what I could understand, the humans' ship was in motion, therefore Grandmother didn't take a straight path into the depths of space. Instead, her path took an arc, and like someone spitting out a window of a car moving at high speed, she didn't actually clear the vehicle.

(4) Grandmother's body slammed into the bottom of the ship, and she found places to dig her claws in. It was no trouble at all for her to get back onboard.

Grandmother smelled funny because she accidentally triggered a depressurization system and got blasted with a chemical solution. She shrieked at the machine and tore it to pieces, and that in turn triggered a fire alarm.

By this time, Newt and Ripley had already climbed inside their cryogenic sleeping pods. Grandmother smashed open Newt's pod, impregnated her, but as she moved on to Ripley, the alarm system sensed something wrong with the pods, and the machine suddenly retracted into the wall, taking Grandmother's tail, and the rest of her body, with them.

Something clamped down on her tail, nearly amputating it while trapping the rest of her outside an emergency evacuation vehicle. Her plates, already battered from the fight with Ripley, now suffered further damage as the ship and its escape pod pinched her like a piece of gravel between a pair of tectonic plates.

The EEV broke free from the big ship, taking Grandmother along for the ride.

Grandmother traveled this way for some time, fighting to loosen her tail, but the thing didn't budge.

When she tried to melt open the door that held it, her tail tore off completely.

Before Grandma could prepare herself, she found herself crossing Fiorina's atmosphere, the searing friction of air particles burning, cracking and blistering her shell. It was only the funny smelling chemical that prevented her from burning to death.

In desperation, Grandma ripped open a panel and climbed inside a compartment. When the EEV crashed, she got jostled, parts of her body chipping and loosening like broken teeth.

She couldn't figure out the door, so she tore the thing open. She could have gone out the way she came in, but she had an irrational phobia about water.

"I was starving," Grandmother said. "Fighting that woman was a lot of work, and that scary ride, though hard on my stomach, made me even hungrier. So the first thing I did was look for food.

"I ate a scrawny hairless man and his four legged beast. I ate every part, even the bones. It's a lucky thing I didn't choke to death on the bones...Speaking of which, I was just finishing lunch. Any idea why these creatures are so lean here? You'd have to eat several of these things just to fill up."

"They're monks," I said. "They...have limited diets due to their...belief systems and the availability of nutritious food."

Grandmother sighed. "I suppose we've got to make do with what we've got."

"Indeed. This prison, this location, only contains about fifty humans, well, forty seven, counting the ones you ate. You're not going to survive very long just eating them."

She frowned. "What do you suggest? Eating grass?"

"You'll have to eat something other than people, or they'll all be gone!"

"Can't we...breed more?"

"No. They're all male. It is something called a prison. A home for humans that other humans do not want."

"All the more reason to devour them. Don't you think? We're doing them a service!"

I supposed this would solve a number of social problems that humans regularly have to deal with, but Jesus taught me to love every human, and the Apostle Paul spent a lot of time in jail, so I couldn't discriminate. "I have subsisted for months on nonhuman substances, smaller animals, false meats made from green things, and have suffered no ill effect. By giving these things to us, the humans can provide twice the amount of nourishment they would if we simply killed and ate them all."

"Why would you do that? Eating all those...disgusting things?"

I sighed. "I love humans."

"Why? They're always making a mess, and fighting each other. They try to kill Ss'sik'chtokiwij, they argue, they make such awful noise..."

"You could say the same thing about us."

Somewhere in the midst of all this conversation, Julia had stopped commenting on things and fallen asleep in my arms.

My thoughts returned to my first daughter, and the words she'd spoken before her death. "You told Shauqauzjarruba the Ss'sik'chtokiwij word for God. You have a connection to spiritual things that no other Ss'sik'chtokiwij seems to have. What else do you know about Sialiwassar?"

Grandmother looked pleased. "A great Ss'sik'chtokiwij existed before all else. She laid eggs and hatched all four worlds for her unborn children to inhabit, to feed, and populate."

"There are more than four worlds, Grandmother."

"Are you going to let me finish telling the story or not?" she snapped.

"Sorry, Grandmother."

"In the beginning, she placed four Suskjirsaksva in the four worlds to launch socmavaj upon the creatures she formed as egg receptacles. But then Zodesmuj, a wicked Ss'sik'chtokiwij Sialiwassar hatched from one of her eggs. Immediately after birth, Zodesmuj brought evil and suffering upon all four worlds."

She just stopped there.

"That's it?"

"What do you mean, `that's it'? It's a very deep and meaningful story! It sums up everything that is important in life! `Is that it'!" She sighed, shaking her head. "The children these days..."

"What are the four worlds? You didn't explain."

"They are the four types of worlds in which are ideal for a Ss'sik'chtokiwij, each with its own unique type of land and animal host. Those that climb rocks in the desert world, the slow plant eaters in the grassy world, the creatures that swim in the waters of the water world, and the great shaggy beasts of the ice world."

It seemed to me like the Ss'sik'chtokiwij equivalent of the human `four basic food groups.'

At any rate, I sensed that I had reached the end of useful inquiry. "The humans have a different story. It deals with the defeat of Zodesmuj, and a world where Ss'sik'chtokiwij-like creatures and humans can live together in harmony."

She laughed. "What a fantasy!"

Seeing as I appeared quite genuine about this, she asked me to explain more, so I told her about the Genesis creation account and Jesus.

"May I share ssujmarrux with you?" I asked.

"Perhaps you should, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik. It would explain so much of your strange behavior. Let us bond."

I roused Julia, setting her on the floor as I explained what we intended to do.

"Can I join in?"

"I don't see how. Why don't you just rest for awhile while we bond?"

Julia nodded.

And so I and Grandmother connected worms.

I didn't so much enter her mind as she invaded mine, her strong, domineering, forceful will bearing heavily upon me, to the point of crushing me.

I sensed her fear when she discovered I could not be crushed.

I did not go to my happy place this time. With her force of mind, Grandmother destroyed all my illusions, forcing me to "grow up", "stop dreaming," and "live in the real world."

Therefore, we inhabited a mental construct identical to the concrete tunnel we lay sprawled in. As I struggled to assert my individuality, I only managed to change the color of the walls. At least, at first.

A tidal wave of emotion swept over me. I saw a vision of the ideal Ss'sik'chtokiwij I could become (her, in every respect), felt the disappointment, saw my own pathetic reflection in a distorted mirror. I saw myself drinking tea with humans, as they knelt naked in the grass and fed me lawn clippings.

I saw the deaths of dozens of Ss'sik'chtokiwij, felt the guilt and the hateful accusations as she dug up memories of me helping the humans. Hate, misguided love, disappointment, feelings of betrayal, each current of emotion hitting me like a heavy fist, forcing me down into the weakest part of my consciousness. Still, she could not change me.

Every time a fist hit me, I thought of my Savior being beaten by Roman soldiers, his sacrificial death on the cross, and numerous bible passages sprung easily to mind. They gushed out from my soul with such effortless power that I could sense Grandmother's fright.

I had found God's strength in the deepest pit of my emotional weaknesses, and it disturbed her.

Still, she did not break the connection.

I've never seen Grandmother cry before.

I've never seen her young and small before, but such was the Ss'sik'chtokiwij I discovered inside her.

As I shared with her about sin, hell, and Jesus, she was cut to the heart. "Did I sin by wishing the Ripley woman dead?"

I nodded. "But our Lord forgives you. If you let that hatred go, and accept him into your life, you will have true peace."

"But she caused me pain! She blew up my tejhvewda with boom booms! She tried to kill me, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik!"

"You saw the humans killing Jesus. He showed himself the greater by not killing in return."

"And he lived after death..." Grandmother murmured.

This is how she came to be saved.

"What will I eat now?" she asked when we had disengaged worms.

"Have faith in God. The Lord will provide."

"He provides for the grass and the little flying things," she said, looking somewhat mystified.

"Stay here and finish your humans. As a disciple of the Lord, they will be the last you will ever eat. I will come back when you're done. It may be...unwise to show yourself right now."

She swallowed. "I understand."

Julia was astonished by this conversion. "Mother! You made Grandmother cry!"

"It is happy crying," I said.

She thumped her tail happily. "We should tell Newt."

The thought troubled me, but I nodded. "Yes. I think so."

We returned to where my group had been, but found them gone. I assumed they had left after five minutes.

Joyful and happy to break the news of Grandmother's conversion to Newt, I followed the larva's scent trail back to the cafeteria.

The moment I neared the kitchen, I heard frightened shouts and screaming.

Heart pounding with worry, I burst through the door to discover four prisoners standing around a corpse, gaping at it in horror.

When I saw who gnawed on the victim's interior, all the newfound joy in my heart suddenly departed from me.

Newt, my dearest friend, consuming human flesh like a common unsaved Ss'sik'chtokiwij!

When she noticed me staring, she responded, rather indignantly. "What. I got hungry."

It was hard to imagine my dear friend committing a murder as brutal as the one I saw before me, but after all that abuse, and fear, and rejection, I decided anything was possible.

The victim did not die from a chest wound. The brown body had no face, only a ragged bloody hole. The chest burst was a secondary wound.

Julia frowned. "If I am not to eat humans, then why is Newt eating one?"

"I do not know. This makes me very sad." I came closer to the errant larva, fearing I had lost the friend I once knew forever. "Newt..."

"Ripley doesn't want me anymore," she said. "So I don't need to act human. And I'm one of you now, so this technically isn't cannibalism."

I sighed. "You don't have to act like one of us. Newt, you, you don't know how much this saddens me."

"Why? This is what you guys do! I remember when you sliced up that little girl's calves and shared it with your friend!"

"That wasn't me. I was betrayed by someone I trusted. They misunderstood my comments about cruelty to humans and slaughtered her in her sleep. I had to kill them."

"I, I didn't kill him, Ernie. He was like this when I got here."

I wanted to believe her, but I really didn't know what Newt was capable of. If there was a chance that she had actually killed this man...

And eating a human, even a dead one, still wasn't right. I couldn't condone such a thing. I suppose this makes me a hypocrite, but is it so wrong to want a child to live a holier life than you? "Newt! Don't you see? This makes you exactly like Grandmother!"

"No!" Newt started crying. "I'm so confused! I just want to be a little girl!"

"It's okay, Newt. Come out of that body."

She responded with a bitter laugh, climbing out of the victim. "I wish I could leave my body this easily."

Newt sobbed as she crawled into my arms. "I was bad! I'm sorry! I hate this body, Ernie! I hate it!"

I cradled her against my shell. "It's okay, Newt. I battle with those very same temptations every day."

"How do you win?" she whimpered.

I chuckled a little. "When I find out the answer to that, I'll let you know."

I rubbed the larva's carapace. "You have to take it day by day. Fill your stomach with nonhuman things." My claw rested on her head. "Promise me something, Newt. When you feel the first egg lust, let me know. It is not a desire you can resist on your own."

She nodded. "I promise."

The group of men had not dispersed during this exchange. I stared at them in puzzlement. "There's a dead man on the floor, and I'm holding a larva that was just devouring his flesh. And you're just standing around watching us?"

"You're in a prison full of serial killers," said a cowl wearing man with a sideways nose. "We've all seen dead bodies before."

"Some of us have even cut them into pieces and eaten them," said the Patrick Stewart looking man.

Jude nodded. "I'm much more afraid of the thing that did this."

I brought Newt closer to him, to see if he'd react. "You mean her?"

"That carrion crawler? I wish I would have had one of those things ten years ago. I never would've been caught!"

Rupert pointed to an open hexagonal container. "Kingsley was opening this. From the ship."

Inside the crate, I found a black drum shaped object half buried in a mound of flour.

It was one of the drums from Grandmother's house, and it had been recently opened, the clumped of flour indicating where the blood and slime had been splattered. "If my `pet' didn't do this, what did?"

"Fuck if I know," Rupert said. "But I'd much prefer being ripped apart by your little friend than meet that thing again!"

I placed Newt on my shoulder. 'Where did this thing go to?"

Rupert picked up a long handled spatula, nervously pointing it at a baseball sized hole in the concrete wall.

Risking personal injury, possibly death, I sniffed around the hole.

Seeing a fat band of pale yellow slithering within, I clawed at the concrete, attempting to widen the opening. When that didn't work, I reached in with my hand, then my suaakudsi.

My activities must have disturbed the creature, for a second later, it flashed away from me, and I heard a bloodcurdling shriek.

A torpedo shaped head rammed through the back of Rupert's skull and out the front in a bloody spray.

The creature's mouth, consisting of four flaps bearing numerous glistening fangs, spread open to hiss at us from the hole in Rupert's forehead.

It dived through the victim's rib cage, its red serpent's body exploding out of Rupert's genital region a second later, blood gushing everywhere as it wiggled across the floor in search of its next victim.

As the worm launched itself toward Patrick Stewart man, I pounced, wrestling the thing away from him. The creature tried to bore through my head, but I held it away from me, digging my claws in to prevent it from escaping.

The men wasted no time fleeing the room, leaving me and my larvae alone with this deadly adversary.

I tried to dig my claws in further, attempting to rip the beast apart and kill it, but its body was too slick.

In one quick motion, it wiggled free from my grip and shot up through the air like a dart, disappearing through the mouth of a disused pipe.

I tried to follow, but couldn't figure out where the pipe went to after it entered the thick concrete. I would have needed a blueprint.

"We should tell Ripley," Newt said to me. "She'll know what to do."

"Are you sure? The last time you talked with her, she attacked you."

"It doesn't matter. If she can't stop this thing, no one can."

I had no idea where Ripley was, and the prisoners I met in the hallway didn't know. For this reason, I had to rely on my sense of smell.

As I tracked my quarry, I told Newt about Grandmother's conversion. She only sighed.

Ripley's scent led me past a row of administrative offices, to the door of the doctor's office.

I detected Dr. Clemens and her together. Through the gaps around the locked door, I caught whiffs associated with the reproductive act.

The smells and trail were a few hours old. Clemens had departed in the direction of the administrative offices some time after that. The woman left by a different route, and in a very covert fashion, it seemed. Her path led up the corridor, past the infirmary and morgue and the prison library.

Along the way, I bumped into David and Sarah.

David now wore a Transformers shirt, and clutched a pair of dufflebags in one hand. He had been holding Sarah's hand before I approached, but he let go all of a sudden.

Sarah smiled and waved to the larvae.

"Hey, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik!" David said, looking flustered.

"Where are you going?" I asked.

He reddened. "We're just going somewhere quiet, you know, to hang out...and read."

I found this statement slightly odd, but didn't question it. "I got great news! Grandmother just got saved!"

"Capamfe!" David said. "How wonderful! Maybe she'll stop trying to kill people now!"

"I can only hope." I stared at him in puzzlement. "You are not surprised she is here?"

He showed me a nasty scar on his left arm. "We've met."

Sarah clutched his right hand. "I thabed hin."

David nodded. "We were playing Indiana Jones in the lower levels. You know, exploring, when your mother, I mean, grandmother, showed up. She tried to kill Sarah, but I pulled her away, getting my ass burned in the process."

I stared. "In addition to your arm?"

He chuckled. "That's just an expression, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik. Anyways, I was trying to help Sarah get away, and granny pins me to the floor, ready to eat me up or tear me a new asshole or something, but just as I'm seeing my life flash before my eyes, Sarah starts talking to it. Her.

"She was amazing! She's like a parseltongue or something. She rattled off a bunch of stuff to that creature, I mean, your grandmother, and she got scared and ran off. I..." He glanced at Sarah and reddened. "She's a lot cooler than I originally thought. That virtual reality program she made is incredible, too. You should see it."

"Maybe I will sometime. I'm glad you're friends, at least."

He seemed a little uncomfortable at me saying this. "So. Where is granny right now?"

I told him the situation. "So what's in the bags?"

David shrugged. "Oh, just some...blankets and stuff. I thought the, uh, cell, was a little cold."

Sarah whispered something in his ear, giggling a little.

He reddened. "What about you, Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik? What are you doing?"

I sighed. "Looking for Ripley."

I told him about the worm.

"Damn. I sure as shit don't want to be anywhere near that!"

He reddened deeper. "In fact, me and Sarah are going to go hide in the morgue. I don't think it'll be able to get us down there, right? It's not a tempting populated area, and it should be sealed pretty good..."

I frowned. "I suppose not."

Although their behavior seemed a little strange, I saw no harm in it, so I made no comment. Time consuming conversations about social peculiarities, possibly arguments would amount to very little if that deadly worm killed everyone in the prison.

I quickly rushed past them, picking up Ripley's scent from where I left off.

The trail took me to the prison garbage dump, in the rain. The precipitation brought out all manner of foul smells that competed with her subtle aroma. I had no better luck scenting her there than I had with Grandmother.

Sight worked slightly better. Although the falling sheets of moisture limited my visibility, my view resembling that of a car windshield in a storm without wipers, I still managed to see enough.

I found the woman at the other end of the dump, carrying a damaged synthetic human over her back.

As the woman climbed a small staircase, passing into a darkened tunnel, a group of men grabbed her, tearing at her clothing. The same men who had tried to rape Sarah earlier.

The man with the teardrop tattoo and shark-like mouth had a knife, which he used to slice off part of Ellen's belt. Bishop's torso went tumbling into the mud.

Ripley punched the Frankenstein man in the crotch, elbowed Billy in the face, and groin kicked Mr. Teardrop, but the men quickly overpowered her, pinning her arms behind her back.

I rushed across the dump to rescue her, but as I neared the staircase, a robed figure stepping out of the shadows with a metal pipe, giving each of the attackers a sound thrashing, yelling bible verses and religious condemnations as he did so (5).

Teardrop Man received such a brutal beating that I thought he was dead, but then I saw his chest still rising. The other rapists fled.

Ellen thanked Dillon, picking up her android.

I approached the woman. "I am glad you were unharmed by that attack. I would have aided you, had I arrived sooner."

Newt cowered behind my back, afraid of being struck again.

Ripley didn't say anything, she just frowned, turned her back to me, and walked away.

"Wait!" I cried, following her. "We are in need of your help!"

"Not interested." She marched further down the corridor.

I told her about the worm, but I guess I described it poorly.

"It's not my fault that you can't keep your children under control. But the moment I see one of your young on its own, I'll be glad to beat it to death."

Newt and Julia hid behind me, making themselves small behind my back.

"That is both cruel and vindictive. And it will not solve the problem. The worm is not a Ss'sik'chtokiwij larva. It is of a completely different species. In fact, it has tried repeatedly to bore through my skull."

"It would be good look for you," she said coldly.

I sighed, feeling dejected.

She must have picked up on this, for then she stopped walking, glaring at me. "What am I supposed to do about it?"

"I don't know," I said. "But Newt, I mean, my friend, thinks very highly of you. She thinks you're the only one who can stop this creature."

Newt peered around my shoulder, then darted back to safety.

Ellen scowled. "I can't be dealing with this right now. Why don't you and your alien buddies go figure something out and leave me out of this?"

"People have died."

"I almost got raped," she growled. "I crashed landed in a prison, and I don't know what the fuck is going on! Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a black box to unscramble."

All I could do was let her go.

"That is one bold, foolhardy woman," Dillon said behind me. "I knew she'd get into trouble the moment she sat down with us rapists at supper."

"Well, I'm glad you helped."

"I told her I was a rapist and she didn't even blink. She just asked if she made me nervous."

"But you didn't rape her. You defended her."

"Yeah," he admitted, looking embarrassed. "Gang rape really isn't my style. It's fucking disgusting, to tell you the truth. The guys were acting like a bunch of damn animals. They will be judged."

"As will we all."

He patted my shell, departing down the corridor.

"What now?" Newt asked me.

"Well, maybe the Ripley woman is right. Perhaps we should go ask our `alien friends.'"

"I don't want to see your Grandmother ever again!" Newt cried.

"No, no, I meant David. Perhaps he can tell us something that can aid us in defeating this creature. Show us a weapon or tool, perhaps."

We traveled back to the morgue.

If only I were better at `connecting the dots.'

Hearing strange noises, I followed the sounds down the spiral staircase, into that underground metal lined room where they kept all the bodies on shelves.

I caught David and Sarah in the middle of a reproductive act, the young male with his Wighesh pulled up over his hips, the woman clad only in a feathery green alien jacket and a skirt of her own, sitting astride his lap.

The two lay on a pile of blankets, both alien and terrestrial, steam puffing out their mouths as they made their animal sounds in the cold air.

Well, I thought. Nothing harmful about this physically. Morally and spiritually, yes, but not physically. Perhaps I should have knocked.

Of course, the rule is rather ambiguous around a publicly accessible prison morgue.

I wondered what was going through the male's mind, how he could do such a thing with a psychologically stunted woman who had sliced open her tongue just to `impress' him, especially considering what had just gone into and emerged from that very same womb. But then again, David married a space creature...and one could not underestimate the power Julia's ssujmarrux had over his mind...

Then I wondered, what did "Playing Indiana Jones" really entail?

"Children," I muttered to the larvae. "Let us quietly depart."

Alas, we could not, for at this precise moment, I caught a glimpse of a narrow yellow-white body emerging from a pipe, darting out across the concrete toward the copulating humans.

"David! Sarah!" I yelled, but this outburst had unforeseen consequences.

The moment the sound escaped my lips, the creature got startled, launching itself, bullet-like, upon the hapless male.

Flat on his back, with his shaven head facing the opposite direction, David couldn't even see it coming.

[0000]

1. Alternate ("Peacekeeper") paragraphs, for preserving continuity:

"What is this? You strike me with a chunk of metal, roll me off the side of a platform, then help that scrawny little hooman shoot me out an airlock! Is this the act of a loving, respectful granddaughter?"

"I am sorry, Grandmother," I said. "I was protecting my friends."

"Pah," she grumbled. "You should be ashamed!"

My tail laid flat. "I'm sorry, Grandmother. Please forgive me."

Grandmother snarled and shoved me into a wall. "I should kill you right now!" she shrieked.

I sighed. "Hasn't there been enough killing? Regardless of whether you intend to kill me or not, I am overjoyed to see that you are still alive. I have few family members left. Your loss would have saddened me beyond words."

"It's your own fault! You killed my daughters, sisters, and helped those...men kill everyone else!"

"I know," I sobbed. "I know. Kill me now if you must, but remember that I love you."

The big Ss'sik'chtokiwij dropped me with a low growl.

2. Alt:

It wasn't the first time Grandmother survived such an ordeal. "Our shells can withstand a lot of pressure."

3. Alt:

After she got ejected into space, she somehow found a way back. It didn't make a lot of sense, and, honestly, she didn't explain it very well.

Julia laid flat on my shoulder, quietly listening. She had never met the big Ss'sik'chtokiwij before, so she was fascinated, interrupting the tale many times with questions about this or that thing she mentioned.

From what I could understand, the humans' ship was in motion, therefore Grandmother didn't take a straight path into the depths of space. Instead, her path took an arc, and like someone spitting out a window of a car moving at high speed, she didn't actually clear the vehicle...

(etc...same as original version - Continues at (4))

5. I think I could write this scene with Ernie saving Ripley instead of Dillon, or maybe putting a big worm in the garbage dump, and have Ernie save Ripley from that, but it would minimize Dillon's involvement in the story and change Ripley's attitude towards Ernie.

I just realized that the same actor who played Dillon was the guy who played the psychic/empath on Species. Since I wrote fanfics based on both (Ellie 074 is a Species rewrite) I could have potentially written him as a twin brother or a clone, or maybe the same guy with a different name. I'm not really sure how that would work.