Alien: Out the Shadows

“This is the direct route,” Hoop said. “The spine of this level. But all the mine sections have emergency exits at various points. We’ll go back, take the other fork, then cut back toward the elevator as soon as we find an exit.”

Ripley didn’t say what she knew they were all thinking. What if all the tunnels are like this? But she caught Baxter’s eye, and the truth passed between them—that he could never climb so many stairs. Maybe none of them could.

Not quickly enough.

They headed back, turned into the other fork of the corridor, then dropped down a series of large steps carved into the floor. Water flowed more freely along the gutters here, tinkling away at various points into hidden depths. Walls ran with it. It provided a background noise that was welcoming at first, but quickly became troubling. Behind the sound of flowing water, anything could approach them.

“I think this is the most recent mine working,” Hoop said. “They’ve been at this particular vein for two hundred days, maybe more.”

“So this is where they found them,” Sneddon said. “Somewhere along here.”

“Maybe,” Hoop said. “We don’t know the details. But we don’t have much choice.” He moved on, and the others followed.

There were several side corridors, smaller with lower ceilings, and as Hoop passed them by, Ripley guessed they were also mine workings. She had no idea how a mine functioned, but she’d been told that the quantities of trimonite found here were small compared to most ore mines. This wasn’t mining on an industrialized scale, but rather prospecting for hidden quantities of an almost priceless material. Digging through a million tons of rock to find half a ton of product.

She hoped that Hoop would know an emergency exit when he saw it.

Behind her, someone sneezed, uttering a quiet, “Oh!” afterward. Amanda had used to sneeze like that—a gentle sound, followed by an expression almost of surprise.

* * *

Amanda is eleven years old. Ripley knows because her daughter wears an oversized badge on her denim shirt, all purple and pink, hearts and flowers. I bought her that, she thinks, and although she can remember accessing the site, ordering the card and badge and the presents she knew Amanda wanted for her birthday—remembers the small smile of satisfaction when she confirmed “place order,” knowing that everything her daughter wanted was on the way—there is also a sense of dislocation, and the knowledge that this never happened.

Family and friends are there. And Alex, Ripley’s ex husband who left them when Amanda was three years old and never, ever came back. No calls, no contact, no sign at all that he was still alive; Ripley only knew that he was through a friend of a friend. Inexplicably, even Alex is there, smiling at Ripley across a table laden with birthday food and cake, with an “Isn’t it a pity we never made it” smile.

And Ripley, also inexplicably, smiles back.

There are other faces, other names, but they are clouded in memory, ambiguous in dreamscape. There’s singing and laughter, and Amanda smiles at her mother, that honest, deep smile of love and adoration that makes Ripley so glad to be alive.