Alien: Out the Shadows

At first, looking around, Ripley caught her breath, because she thought the walls were lined with that strange, organic, extruded compound they’d found in the ship. But when she moved closer she saw that it was rock that had been melted and resolidified, forming a solid barrier against the loose material that might lie behind it. There were still props and buttresses lining the walls and ceiling, but the bulk of the strength lay in the altered rock. They’d used the bigger, tracked plasma torches for that, she supposed. Their heat must have been incredible.

“Everyone good?” Hoop asked, breaking the silence. He was standing close to a set of plastic curtains that led into a tunnel beyond.

No one spoke. Hoop took that as confirmation that, yes, they were all good, and he pushed the curtains aside.

Ripley quickly followed. Out of all of them, Hoop felt the safest. The strongest. She wasn’t even sure why she believed that. But she went with her instincts and decided to stay close to the engineer. If they ended up in a fight, she wanted to fight beside him.

The corridor beyond the elevator compound was narrower and more functional. The lights continued along the ceiling. The walls were slick and held strange, almost organic flow patterns where they’d been plasma-torched. Shallow ditches were cut into the floor at the base of each wall, and water so dark it was black glinted there. It was motionless, stagnant, inky. Ripley wondered what it contained.

Hoop waved them on.

Baxter hobbled with one arm over Kasyanov’s shoulder. He grunted, gasped, and though he couldn’t avoid the pain, Ripley wished he wasn’t making so much noise. Every sound he made was amplified, echoing along the rock-lined tunnels much louder than their careful footfalls.

They’ll know we’re here, she thought. They probably know anyway. If anything’s going to happen, it’s going to happen, and being cautious won’t prevent it.

They reached a junction. Hoop paused only for a moment, then took the left fork. He moved quickly and carefully, holding his flashlight in one hand, the spray gun in the other. The additional light helped illuminate contours and trip hazards on the ground.

It wasn’t far along this tunnel that they came across the first sign of the aliens.

“What the hell is that?” Baxter asked. He sounded tired, and on the verge of panic. Maybe he thought that at some point they’d be forced to leave him behind after all.

“Something from the mine?” Lachance suggested. “Mineral deposit left by water?”

But Ripley already knew that wasn’t the case.

It started gradually. A smear on the wall, a spread of material on the floor. But ten yards from them the alien material lined all surfaces of the tunnel in thick layers, strung like natural arches beneath the ceiling and lying across the floor in complex, swirling patterns.

A gentle mist floated on the air. Or perhaps it was steam. Ripley tugged off a glove and waved her hand before her, feeling the moisture but finding it hard discerning whether it was hot or cold. Another contradiction, perhaps. These strange structures were impressive, and even vaguely beautiful in the same way a spider’s web was beautiful. But the things that had made this were the opposite.

“No,” Sneddon said. “It’s them. We saw something like this on the Samson.”

“Yeah, but…” Lachance said.

“That was a much smaller scale,” Ripley said. “Not like this.” She was breathing fast and shallow because she could smell them here, a faintly citrus stench that clung to the back of her throat and danced on her tongue.

“I don’t like this,” Baxter whispered.

“Me neither,” Lachance said. “I want my mommy. I want to go home.”

The tunnel narrowed ahead of them where the substance bulged out from the walls, up from the floor, down from the ceiling. Here and there it formed stalactites and stalagmites, some of them thin and delicate, others thicker and looking more solid. There were hints of light deep within the alien structure, but only here and there. The ceiling lights still worked, but were mostly covered up.

Hoop stepped a little closer and shone his flashlight inside.

Ripley wanted to grab him and pull him back. But she couldn’t help looking.

The light didn’t penetrate very far. The moisture in the air was revealed more fully by the flashlight beam, skeins of light and dark shifting and waving with a gentle breeze. Whether that breeze was caused by their presence, their breathing, or that of another, Ripley didn’t want to find out.

“I’m not going in there,” Sneddon said.

“Yeah,” Kasyanov said. “I’m with you on that one.”

“I’m not sure we’d get through anyway,” Hoop said. “And even if we could, it’d slow us down.”

“It’s like a nest,” Ripley said. “A giant wasp nest.”

“Is there another way to the elevator shaft?” Baxter asked.