Then she turned her attention back to the stomach wound, stapling it, as well.
“I’ll fix you up properly when we get back to the Marion,” she said.
“Yeah,” Ripley replied. “Right.”
“You’ll be able to move easier now. Nothing’s going to pop or spill out.”
“Great.”
Kasyanov taped her stomach, then stood again. She took a small syringe from her pack.
“This will keep you going. It’s not exactly… medicine. But it’ll work.”
“I’ll take anything,” Ripley said. Kasyanov pressed the needle into her arm, then stood back and zipped up her pack.
“You good?” Hoop asked.
Ripley stood on her own, tucking her arms into her suit and shrugging it on. “Yeah,” she replied. “Good.”
She wasn’t. He could see that, and hear it in her voice. She was in pain and woozy, and distracted, too. Ever since she’d wiped out those queen eggs she’d been somewhere else. But there was no time to discuss it now.
Hoop thought again about those aliens viewing their burning infant queens, sniffing Ripley’s blood, and howling.
“There,” he said, pointing along the base of the vast wall. “Openings. Whichever one leads up, we take it. Lachance, you take point. I’ve got Sneddon.” He knelt and took Sneddon’s weight onto his shoulder. As they moved out, he held back until Ripley was walking ahead of him. She moved in a very controlled way, every movement purposeful and spare.
When they reached the first of the openings, Lachance shone his light inside. Moments later he waved them on and entered, and they started up another curving ramp.
From behind, somewhere in the vast shadowy depths, something screeched.
The rough leaves tickle her stomach. They’re running across a field in France, weaving through the corn crop, arms up to push the stringy leaves aside and stop them scratching their eyes. She and Amanda are wearing their bathing costumes, and already she’s anticipating the breathtaking plunge into the lake.
Amanda is ahead, a slim and sleek teenager, darting between corn rows and barely seeming to touch the plants. Ripley isn’t so graceful, and her stomach feels as though it has been scratched to shreds by the leaves. But she won’t look down to check. She’s afraid that if she does she’ll lose track of her daughter, and something about this…
…isn’t right.
The sun shines, the corn crop rustles in a gentle breeze, there is silence but for their footfalls and Amanda’s excited giggling from up ahead. But still this is wrong. The lake awaits but they will never reach it. The sun is high, the sky clear, yet the heat hardly touches her skin. Ripley feels cold.
She wants to call, Amanda, wait! But the leaves slapping across her stomach and chest seem to have stolen her voice.
She sees something out of the corner of her eye. A shadow that does not belong in the cornfield, a shape too sharp and cruel. But when she looks it has gone.
Her daughter is further ahead now, pushing plants aside as she sprints the final hundred meters to the field’s edge and the welcoming water.
Something keeps pace with them off to the right, a dark shape streaking through the crop and smashing thick stalks into shreds. But looking directly at it means that Ripley can’t see it at all.
She’s panicking now, trying to run faster, trying to shout. Amanda has vanished ahead, leaving behind only swaying plants.
Ripley hears a high, loud screech. It’s not human.
Bursting from the crop at the edge of the field, she sees Amanda caught in a grotesque web between two tall trees, trapped there in the strange, solid material that appears to have held her there for an age. Her daughter screams again as the bloody creature bursts fully from her chest.
In her peripheral vision, Ripley sees those tall beasts moving out of the corn to pay homage to their newborn.
Amanda screams one last time—
“Ripley, fast!” Hoop shouted.
Ripley looked around, not shocked or surprised. She knew exactly where she was and why. The vision was a memory of a time that had never happened. But she still shed a tear for her cocooned, bleeding, screaming daughter. Terror mixed with anger, becoming a part of her, unwilling to let go.
“They can’t win, Hoop,” she said. “We can’t let them.”
“They won’t. Now run!”
“What are you—?”
“Run!” he shouted. He grabbed her hand and ran with her, but soon let her go again and fell back.
“Don’t be stupid!” Ripley shouted back at him.
“Argue, and we’ll all die!” Lachance called back. “Hoop knows what he’s doing.”
They climbed the ramp. It was steeper than the first, the turns tighter, and it seemed to grow narrower and steeper the higher they went. Soon there were steps built into its surface, and they had to slow down so that they didn’t trip. Lachance carried Sneddon again. Kasyanov helped, and Baxter was using his plasma torch as a crutch, lamming it down and swinging along on it with every step. She wondered what effect that would have if he had to fire it again. She wondered…
She turned and ran back down the ramp.
“Ripley!” Lachance called.
“Argue and we all die!” she said, and soon they were out of sight above her. For a while she was on her own, descending the ramp, illuminated by an already fading glow from the structure around her. Then she heard something running toward her and she crouched down close to the central spine.
Hoop appeared, lit up by her flashlight’s beam. Sweating, eyes wide, he tensed, but didn’t relax again.
“We really need to go,” he said.
“How many?”
“Too many.”
Ripley wasn’t sure she could run again. Her stomach ached, she could barely move her right arm, and she felt sick. But the booster Kasyanov had given her coursed through her veins, and every negative thought was dragged down and hidden away. There was a sensory distance around her. Though unpleasant, it was also protecting her, so she embraced it, losing track of her various agonies. She knew that they would be waiting for her on the other side.
From above, Lachance started shouting, but she couldn’t tell what he was saying.
“Oh, no,” Ripley said. Yet Hoop grinned and grabbed her hand, and before she knew it they were running up the ramp once more. She saw lights ahead of them, and the ramp ended in another wide space. This was more like a cave than a building—slopes of rocks, an uneven ceiling, walls that had only ever been touched by human tools.
At the far end, Kasyanov and Baxter held Sneddon up between them. The first thing Ripley noticed was the opening in the rock behind them.
Then Sneddon lifted her head and looked around, and Ripley saw that the face-hugger was gone.
18
ELEVATOR
When Hoop had broken away from the others, he’d seen at least ten of the aliens stalking through the massive room, searching between giant pillars, crouching by the statues and their plinths. There was enough fading light still emanating from the stonework, and as he’d watched their shadows had slowly merged into the surroundings.
He’d backed away slowly, light extinguished, and then run, finding his way by feel. Ripley’s flashlight had brought light to his world again.