Alien: Covenant - Origins - The Official Movie Prequel

IX

Within the van there was frustration. An immensely difficult, dangerous, and complex operation had come to naught because one of their number had been caught relaxing, for just an instant. No one yelled at the injured offender, none of his colleagues spoke at all. There was nothing to be done about it. The aim of their enterprise had been lost.

There was nothing for it but to move on.

In order to do that they had to survive, which meant escaping the attentions of those police who hadn’t stopped, and who continued to pursue. Though the van’s driver was skilled and his vehicle had been enhanced, it wasn’t capable of outmaneuvering a police cruiser, much less the two choppers that were now tracking the van from above.

Twice, pursuing police tried to cut the van off. One cruiser attempted a pit maneuver. It failed because the van was equipped with gyroscopic correction firmware that wasn’t standard issue for such a vehicle.

While the police and company security were eager to take their quarry into custody, they were willing to take their time. Kept under close observation both from street level and from the air, there was nowhere the van could hide. Given the speed at which it was traveling, its battery pack would run down soon.

The pursuing police began to fall behind.

Executing a hard right, the van shot into an open, ten-story parking structure. Having scoped out the route during rehearsal runs, the driver knew where he was going without having to check with the vehicle’s navigation system.

Choppers took up positions outside the garage’s two exits while newly arrived cruisers and armored vehicles began to seal off every possible escape route. The structure abutted the dark ribbon of the Sumida River, which naturally eliminated one option.

On the fifth floor, the van swung to the right toward a line of parked vehicles. It slowed but did not stop. The heavy individual in the passenger’s seat fingered a cluster of controls on his comm unit.

In response to his manipulations the trap doors built into the bottom of the van dropped open. The large dark container, once again holding the three black-clad abductors, fell free and slid out between the van’s rear two wheels. Riding on four smaller solid wheels built into its corners and driven by a self-contained electric motor, it followed a homing signal silently to its right until it was directly underneath one of the hundreds of parked vehicles—another van, though not a utility vehicle.

Double doors that matched those on the underside of the fleeing service truck slid open in the underside of this new, privately owned van. Twin hoists clutched the container and lifted it up as the trap doors slid shut beneath it.

All three of the abductors rapidly changed into the clothes that were waiting for them. Two remained out of sight in the back of the vehicle as the third took the wheel, pulled out of the parking slot, and drove slowly back the way they had come.

As they headed toward the exit, several police cruisers screamed past them. The trio knew they were being scanned, but no one moved to stop them. By the time the last official vehicle entered the parking structure, the van had emerged onto the same street they had used to enter.

The service van sped up the ramp that led to the tenth floor of the parking structure. Emerging onto the open roof, it was instantly transfixed in the spotlights of two hovering police helicopters. With a dozen or so pursuing cruisers blocking the down ramp and closing in from behind, there was nowhere for the fugitives to go.

Making a sharp left, the van accelerated. It continued to accelerate even as several police cruisers slowed and turned sideways to form a blockade behind it. Exiting their vehicles, a number of officers took aim with weapons and attempted to shoot out the tires of the fleeing van. In their haste and in the uneven light, they missed.

The van was still accelerating when it smashed through the low retaining wall that ran around the top floor of the parking structure. It seemed to slow somewhat as it fell, describing a smooth arc as it soared through the air, then impacted the dark water of the Sumida. Within minutes there was no sign of the service vehicle. It sank completely out of sight, leaving behind only bubbles.

Operating on the possibility that the occupants had enough foresight to store emergency padding and portable breathing gear in their vehicle, police on shore combed the river embankment while choppers played their lights over the river in both directions. The search went on even after police divers located the van.

Extracting the badly damaged vehicle from the river bottom, a heavy lift chopper brought it to the top of the parking structure, where a temporary command post had been established.

With the front end of the van mangled from the impact of hitting the water, it took some time to cut away both crumpled doors and extract the bodies within. There were only two. Since Jenny Yutani had stated that the van had contained five men, an immediate search was launched for the remaining three. The intensive effort that followed, however, found no one in the parking structure, in the office complex next door, or on the streets outside.

The identification found on the two bodies indicated that they were employees of a large, reputable service firm that specialized in the maintenance of electrical and plumbing systems in big commercial buildings. Very quickly, what appeared at first to be a relatively straightforward matter of identification began to unravel when it was discovered that the service vehicle they had been driving had recently been stolen from a company lot. The uniforms they were wearing had been tailored and weren’t company issue, and their identification cards were counterfeit.

This required the police to run physicals. Facial scans reconstituted their features, given the damage. Retina scans proved useless, again due to facial damage. In the end, it was DNA matching that finally succeeded in identifying the two dead kidnappers.

The results were as shocking as they were unexpected.