The corridor stretched out ahead of them, a long iron tube of ribbed plating and recessed amber strips.
Every few yards, hanging panels of insulation drifted in the draft of the failing ventilation system, shivering whenever the Nostromo groaned from deep within its rusted bulkheads.
Beside her, Ripley’s breathing was a thin, ragged sound.
“How much further?” Ripley asked, her voice strained against the dry air.
“Two hundred meters,” Alexandra said.
She kept her eyes on the ceiling vents and the intersections ahead, listening beneath the hum of the ship’s failing systems for anything heavier than the usual settling of the dying hull.
Ripley cast a sharp, assessing look sideways, her footsteps faltering slightly against the ribbed floor.
“Is that thing… is it coming toward us?”
“Six is tracking it,” Alexandra said, keeping her stride steady.
“How do you know where it is?” Ripley pressed, her fingers tightening into a fist as she struggled to match the pace.
Then, looking closer at Alexandra’s profile: “Are you coming with the shuttle?”
“I’m not,” Alexandra replied without breaking stride.
Ripley stopped dead, her breath hitching in the dry air as she stared at her.
“You’re staying behind? On this ship?”
“Keep moving,” Alexandra repeated, her tone hardening just enough to cut through the panic rising in the engineer’s throat.
“We’re almost at the bay.”
Several decks away, Yue had been moving through the maintenance passages for what felt like hours.
The corridors were narrower down here, with pipes running along the walls and cables hanging from open panels overhead.
Several of the emergency lights had failed completely, leaving long sections in darkness.
Yue had stopped trying to follow the ship’s signs after the first few turns, as too many of them led into damaged sections, leaving her with no idea which routes were still safe.
She only knew that she needed to find Mei.
They had been separated during the first rush through the ship.
Yue had tried to follow her sister, but a closing bulkhead had cut them off from each other before either of them could get through, and after that, everything had become confusion: people running in different directions, doors slamming shut, screaming from somewhere behind them, and then the creatures starting to move through the ship.
Yue had spent most of the time since then trying to find her way back.
The maintenance section had given her somewhere to hide.
The cameras in this part of the ship were dead, and several of the systems that normally monitored the area had stopped functioning, a fact she had discovered by accident after taking shelter in one of the service corridors.
Once she realized the creatures were using the main passages, she had stayed inside the maintenance network rather than risking another crossing.
Now she had started moving again.
“Mei?”
Her voice disappeared into the passage ahead.
Yue waited for an answer, listening as the ship groaned around her.
Ventilation fans started and stopped without warning, distant machinery complained behind the walls, and every so often something metallic shifted somewhere far enough away that she couldn’t tell what had caused it, though none of the faint sounds belonged to her sister.
As she tightened her grip on the small maintenance lamp she had taken from a locker and continued forward, the corridor opened into another junction where an empty water bottle lay beside a torn ration wrapper near the wall.
Yue lowered the lamp and crouched to pick up the bottle, recognizing it instantly as belonging to Mei.
She looked down the corridor, calling out again into the empty space, but received no answer.
Moving faster now that she had confirmation of where her sister had been, she hurried toward the maintenance bay with its green lock light glowing on the door.
Yue pushed it open to find the room empty, though unmistakable signs showed someone had been there recently; the barricade had been pushed aside, the dust on the floor was disturbed, and the discarded ration wrapper matched the supplies stored within.
Her sister was gone.
For a moment Yue simply stood there, trying to process the gap between finally finding evidence that Mei had been alive here and discovering she had already moved on.
Looking out toward the open doorway with the bottle still clutched in her hand, she realized that knowing Mei had survived this long was enough to keep her going.
Yue turned toward the corridor and continued searching.
Back in the main passage, Alexandra and Ripley continued toward the shuttle bay.
Ripley kept glancing over her shoulder as they moved.
“How much longer?”
“Less than two hundred meters now.”
“And you’re really staying behind?”
Alexandra didn’t answer immediately.
She kept walking.
“I have something else to take care of.”
Ripley looked at her, but Alexandra didn’t elaborate.
Ahead, the corridor widened as they approached the shuttle section.
When they reached the airlock of the Narcissus, Ripley stumbled forward, catching herself hard against the cold metal of the hatch.
Her chest heaved, her knuckles whitening as she gripped the side.
“Is that it?”
“That’s it,” Alexandra said, stepping up to the exterior control panel.
She tapped a sequence of keys Six had pulled from the Nostromo’s master directories.
With a heavy pneumatic hiss, the inner seal slid open, revealing the cramped, Spartan interior of the escape craft.
Ripley stared inside for a fraction of a second, then climbed through the hatch.
Her legs trembled visibly as she caught the edge of a seat, hauled herself into the pilot’s chair, and began looking over the unfamiliar consoles.
Her hands hovered over the rows of toggle switches and glowing orange screens.
Alexandra stepped closer, leaning into the cabin.
“Here. Hit that switch when the launch sequence initiates. It bypasses the umbilical lock so the clamps don’t catch.”
Ripley glanced up from the primary flight console, her fingers moving quickly across the familiar-looking controls before pausing at the secondary override.
“And if I miss it?”
“The clamps hold. You don’t go anywhere.” Alexandra tapped the secondary console.
“Start the primary ignition sequence now.”
Ripley’s fingers found the sequence.
A dull, rhythmic thrum built beneath the floor of the shuttle as the engines caught, coughing once before settling into a deep, vibrating roar.
The cockpit lights flared to life, casting an amber glow across the instrument panels.
Ripley looked up through the glass, her eyes catching Alexandra’s face.
“You’re not coming.”
“Get out of here,” Alexandra said.
“Now.”
Ripley reached out and slammed the launch sequence toggle.
Outside, the mechanical umbilical clamps snapped back with a sharp metallic clang.
The Narcissus lurched forward instantly, the sudden acceleration throwing Ripley hard against the back of her pilot’s seat before she managed to grab the overhead restraints.
Alexandra stepped back from the airlock as the shuttle cleared the bay doors, its thrusters flaring white against the dark expanse of space.
She watched the small craft shrink against the starfields, tracking its trajectory until the thruster burn faded into the distance.
On her wrist, the combat watch flared with a brief, silent notification:
[Mandatory Subplot completed: Ripley survived five hours. Reward: 3,000 reward points and Rank C reward.]
Alexandra lowered her arm.
“Alex,” Six said through the earpiece.
“It’s forty meters away.”
Alexandra turned her head toward the dark mouth of the intersecting service corridor.
Forty meters.
She tightened her grip on the sword.
Ever since the mission had started, she had wondered whether something about it was wrong.
Too many things had changed.
Too many things had happened in ways that seemed to push them toward the same outcome.
She had never been able to prove any of it.
Maybe this is it.
Another mutated Xenomorph would be more than bad luck.
She had already fought one creature that shouldn’t have been there.
If another one had been waiting for her at the end of the evacuation route, it was hard not to wonder whether that was what the mission had been leading toward all along.
Then again, she had no idea what was actually controlling the situation.
Maybe I’m seeing a pattern because I expect one.
The escaped Xenomorph had come from the control-room trap.
That much she knew.
Xuan’s group had deliberately sealed three of them in and destroyed them.
One creature had escaped before the trap closed and was now moving through the service shafts toward the shuttle bay.
That could explain everything.
Or it could be exactly what someone wanted her to think.
Alexandra looked toward the dark corridor.
Trap or not, it’s here.
She drew the sword from its scabbard.
“Coming around the corner?”
“Now.”
Alexandra stepped into the secondary junction.
The corridor grew colder as Alexandra walked deeper into the secondary junction.
The smell of burnt insulation and acid residue hung thick in the air.
She stopped at the intersection, pressing her back against the scorched white enamel of the bulkhead.
She drew her anti-corrosion sword from its scabbard at her hip, the dark metal absorbing the amber emergency light.
A wet, heavy scrape of claws echoed from the dark passage ahead, followed by a low, rattling hiss that vibrated straight through the floor plates.
The creature stepped into the light.
Its elongated skull was larger than the mature Xenomorph Alexandra had fought before, its black carapace catching the amber emergency light.
Its heavy tail whipped behind it, leaving deep scoring in the metal floor with every twitch.
Alexandra watched it advance, her grip tightening on the hilt of her sword.
As the beast surged forward, she dropped low, sliding beneath the reach of its massive forelimbs.
Her blade came up in a sharp arc, driving toward the joint of its left arm.
The anti-corrosion coating bit deep into the chitin, but the sheer density of the muscle arrested the steel halfway through.
A jet of yellow-green acid blood sprayed from the wound, spattering across the floor and hissing violently as it ate into the plating.
The fumes burned her throat.
Alexandra scrambled backward, keeping her boots clear of the spreading pool.
The creature shrieked—a piercing sound that rattled her teeth—and lashed back with its heavy shoulder, catching her full in the chest.
The impact lifted her off her feet, sending her crashing hard into the steel wall.
Her breath left her in a single, violent rush.
The white fabric of her suit tore across her ribs, and a sharp spike of pain flared through her torso.
The Xenomorph closed the distance instantly, its massive inner jaws snapping forward.
Alexandra rolled to the side as the jaws punched through the metal where her head had been a second before.
She scrambled to her feet, but the creature swung its tail in a wide, sweeping arc.
She ducked beneath the swing, but the back-sweep caught her arm, driving her against the scorching bulkhead.
Her sword slipped from her fingers, clattering onto the deck plates just out of reach.
The creature reared back, its maw opening wide to strike again.
Alexandra saw the creature shift its weight before the attack came.
Its rear foot slid across the slick deck.
Its left side opened for a fraction of a second.
The tail was still rising.
The inner jaws snapped down.
Alexandra twisted beneath them, felt the teeth scrape across the shoulder of her suit, and drove herself farther underneath the creature’s raised arm.
Her hand found the ragged wound she had opened earlier.
She shoved the heavy fragmentation grenade directly into the flesh.
The Xenomorph’s massive body jerked violently.
Alexandra tore the pin free with her thumb and threw herself backward onto the floor.
Boom.
The blast detonated against its chest cavity, a concussive wave of heat and shrapnel that filled the passage with thick, black smoke.
The Xenomorph let out a deafening screech, its weight throwing it backward against the opposite bulkhead.
Through the haze, Alexandra pushed herself up.
Her forearm was bleeding badly enough to drip onto the deck.
She pressed her teeth together and pushed herself upright.
A few seconds later, she glanced down.
The bleeding had stopped.
Beneath the ruined sleeve, her skin was whole, the cellular vitality of the T-Virus Perfect Mutation closing the wound without a trace.
The Xenomorph came through the smoke with its head lowered, one arm sweeping across the corridor.
Alexandra saw the sword lying beneath its left side, close enough to reach if she went under the swing.
She dropped.
The arm passed over her back hard enough to scrape the air from her lungs.
Alexandra rolled across the deck, caught the sword’s hilt, and pulled it toward herself.
The creature twisted.
Its tail came around.
Alexandra planted one hand against the deck and pushed herself sideways.
The tail struck where her ribs had been a moment earlier, carving a deep line through the metal.
She came up with the sword in both hands.
The wound in its chest was still open.
Acid continued to run down the black carapace in thin streams, and the beast’s movements had grown ragged, its weight visibly favoring its damaged side.
There.
The creature lunged again, its momentum carrying it past her.
Alexandra stepped inside the attack, watching the beast’s weight shift and expose the vulnerable joint at the base of the skull as it tried to recover its balance.
She brought the blade down with both hands, driving it straight through the point where the spine met the carapace.
The metal bit through bone with a wet crunch.
The Xenomorph froze, its limbs twitching once before its massive weight collapsed onto the deck, sliding a few feet in a pool of dark, smoking blood.
Alexandra kept her weight balanced over the hilt, waiting through the lingering twitches of the massive tail until the heavy carcass settled entirely.
Alexandra stood over the carcass, leaning one hand against the scorched bulkhead.
Her legs were shaking, and her breathing gradually settled as she stared down at the ruined remains at her feet.
Her sword was covered in acid residue and dark blood, and her suit was shredded across her torso.
On her wrist, the combat watch flared with a brief notification:
[Mature Xenomorph (Mutated) killed. Awarded 1,000 points.]
Alexandra stared at the dead creature.
Another mutated one.
That thought had been sitting in the back of her mind ever since Six first warned her that something was moving toward them.
She had suspected this mission might be a trap from the moment the mandatory objective appeared.
Three thousand points and a Rank C reward for keeping Ripley alive for five hours was too much to feel like a simple survival task.
Something about the whole situation had felt arranged.
And now there was another creature that shouldn’t have been there.
So this is the trap?
Alexandra looked down at the corpse.
It would fit.
The creature had been waiting on their route.
It was stronger than the others, larger than the mature Xenomorphs she had already fought, and it had nearly killed her.
But she couldn’t be certain.
The creature had also escaped from Xuan’s trap.
Six had tracked it moving through the service shafts toward the shuttle bay.
There was a perfectly ordinary explanation for why it had been there.
Maybe I’m overthinking this.
She looked back toward the corridor.
Ripley was gone.
The shuttle had escaped.
The creature was dead.
That should have been the end of it.
Except Alexandra couldn’t shake the feeling that something was still wrong.
“Alex?” Six asked through the earpiece, quiet and cautious.
“Are you still there?”
Alexandra wiped a smear of soot and blood from her cheek and let out a long, slow breath.
“I’m here,” Alexandra said.
“Just give me a second.”
She looked down the empty corridor again.
Then her eyes narrowed.
“Six?”
“Yes?”
“Could you check if something else is coming?”
There was a short pause.
I don’t believe that was it.
Six’s response came through the comms.
“On it.”
The corridor fell silent.