Alien: Covenant - The Official Movie Novelization

XXI

While the silent collection room had been a dark house of horrors, at least he had been able to breathe normally there, Cole thought as he reached the bottom of the stairs. In contrast, the atmosphere in the chamber where he now found himself was almost unbreathable.

The acrid, foul air was thick in his throat and raspy in his lungs. Coughing, fighting to respire, he held the back of one hand to his mouth as he used his light and the sighting beam from his rifle to survey the underground hollow.

Penetrating the dank, steaming chamber was like walking into a sauna. It appeared to be empty save for some vertically mounted ovoids, like giant, leathery eggs. The top of one of them was peeled back like an open flower. Advancing slowly toward it while holding his rifle at the ready, he carefully peered down and in. As near as he could tell, it was quite empty. His nose wrinkling as he continued to fight the pervasive stink, he moved on.

Something on the floor that wasn’t egg-shaped drew his attention. Starting at the head, his light traveled down the length of the dead body. Lying on his back, his chest burst open with blood and organs splattered everywhere, Oram’s frozen gaze was fixed on the ceiling. Cole stared at it, mesmerized, until a hint of movement nearby drew his attention.

It was one of the eggs. Something was rippling beneath the surface, moving inside. Cautiously, he approached. The top began to open, slowly, segments folding back and away to expose the interior. He leaned forward.

A whirlwind of limbs exploded towards his face.

Not only was Cole a soldier, he was good at it. His reflexes were excellent. Quick as the thing was, the private managed to get a hand between it and his face. As an uncoiling tube poked and prodded madly at the palm of his hand, fighting to get through or around the fleshy obstacle, Cole shoved hard.

Fit and strong, he succeeded in flinging it off. He brought up his rifle and tried to aim, but before he could get off a shot it scuttled away, disappearing up the stairs. Racing in pursuit, the private let out a warning shout.

“Sarge! Look out!”

The facehugger sprang just as Lopé, alerted by Cole’s yell, turned. No less agile than the private, the sergeant just managed to thrust an arm up in front of his face.

Legs spread, the creature snapped all eight limbs onto Lopé’s head. Its muscular tail whipped around the sergeant’s neck, binding his upraised arm to his face and body. With the arm fastened in position, it blocked Lopé’s mouth.

As he surmounted the last of the stairs, it took Cole only seconds to divine what was happening. Rushing to help Lopé, he grabbed for the creature that was smothering him.

Together, the two men fought with the spidery creature, striving to pull it off the sergeant. Displaying a seemingly inexhaustible store of energy, the thing strove with just as much effort to force its way past Lopé’s arm to get at his mouth.

As Lopé flailed at the alien creature with his free hand, alternately battering at it and attempting to pull it off, he stumbled in several directions. Fighting to help his colleague, Cole was pulled along. They fell into and along tables, knocking over and smashing carefully preserved and mounted specimens, hand-made containers, and everything else in their wild, uncontrolled path.

Getting the fingers of both hands under the creature’s body, Cole pulled and yanked repeatedly. His efforts only stimulated the attacker to tighten its grip on the sergeant’s head.

Realizing that physical strength wasn’t going to be sufficient to dislodge the creature, Cole pulled his service knife and jammed it into the creature’s ventral side. Giving the blade a twist sent it deep into the abdomen. Wrenching on it turned the sharp edge sideways.

Spurting from the wounded thing, acidic blood spattered Lopé’s face. Screaming from the pain, the sergeant let go of the creature and reached for his face. At the same time the injured creature leaped clear, dribbling acid in its wake.

With no time to pause and analyze what had happened, Cole reacted according to his training. Spinning, he raised his rifle and fired. The facehugger was incredibly fast, but not faster than a shell. One shot struck home, sending it tumbling and spewing more acid. Marching toward it, Cole kept firing and firing, until the twitching legs had been blown off and the body had been thoroughly shredded. Vapor rose from the pool of blood that formed beneath it, eating into the solid pavement.

Sobbing in agony, Lopé slid to the floor. Acid continued to burn into his face, eating away at his cheek. Grim-faced and focused, Cole pulled a medpak from his belt and ripped it open. The pouch contained a potent emergency cocktail of plasma, antibiotics, collagen-boost, and fentanyl-4. Clenching his teeth and not waiting for approval from the wounded man, he slapped it firmly against the side of the sergeant’s face.

Lopé let out a scream and dug his fingers into Cole’s arms. Ignoring the press of the sergeant’s grip, Cole held the pak in place until the incorporated collagenic adhesives could take hold on their own. Within moments the adjuvant painkillers started to kick in. Lopé’s hold on the private’s arms started to relax. Letting out an anguished moan, he slumped against Cole.

Gently easing him back against a table, Cole prepared to keep watch as the sergeant lapsed into a heavily medicated and welcome unconsciousness. The patch would heal him, but given the depth of his wound, repair to damaged nerves and blood vessels would take some time.

Which was the one thing the anxious, edgy private was afraid they didn’t have.

Her back was bruised, not broken, but Daniels found she couldn’t straighten. The pain was too severe. As she crawled backward away from David, she wondered if that had been his intent. Deliberately to injure her, to incapacitate, but not to kill? It made twisted, perverted sense. A dead specimen makes a poor subject for experimentation.

He eyed her thoughtfully as he advanced, slowing his pace to match her desperate crawl.

“I’ve underestimated you. I can see why Walter thought so much of you.”

Despite her pain, and despite the inhuman menace patiently tracking her, she was caught by his words.

“Thought?”

“Alas, he’s left this vale of tears. A great waste. So much lost potential, but in the end, the decision was his. He didn’t voice it, but there was no need for him to do so. I merely tidied up what sadly turned out to be a dead end. But who will cry for him, really? Will you?”

A blur of motion so fast she could scarcely detect it, and he was kneeling at her side. She let out a gasp as he grabbed her hair and held it tightly, so tight she could not even turn her head. As he leaned toward her, close, closer, it reminded her of something. At that moment she could not put a name to it. Rising panic overwhelmed any effort at coherent thought.

He kissed her. It was savage, brutal, awkward.

When he drew back, his expression was thoughtful.

“Isn’t that how it’s done? I contain sufficient information to duplicate the requisite physicality. I know exactly which muscles are involved, though the finer points of time and pressure elude me. Variations are to be expected based on the dissimilar physiognomies of the individuals involved. Well, you can teach me the finer points. We’ll have plenty of time.”

Ignoring the sharp pain, she wrenched free of his grasp and lunged toward his face, teeth bared and ready to bite. He caught her, of course, intercepting her face at the last moment. Waited until she was as close as possible short of making contact.

“You stink of humanity,” he murmured, “but I’ll love you just the same.”

She spat directly into his face. He ignored it, contemplative.

“Saliva. A bodily fluid usually available in surplus. In my time here I’ve learned a lot about bodily fluids, too. You’ll come to know everything I know about them. Except for you, Danny, the learning process will be… different.”

Keeping a tight grip on his rifle with one hand, Cole used the other to maintain firm pressure on the emergency pak that was starting to cling to Lopé’s face. The sergeant was awake again, and breathing better now. The fen-4 was doing its job mitigating the pain, and the healing process was underway.

“Easy, easy, Sarge. Lookin’ better already.” As much as he had wanted to, Cole hadn’t allowed his superior to sleep more than a few moments. “We’ll get you out of here.” His expression tightened. “Don’t worry about the crab. It’s dead. I blew it to bits.”

Lopé’s eyes grew wide and the private hastened to reassure him. “Hey, didn’t you hear what I said? It’s dead. Guts and legs all over the place. I—”

It struck Cole then that Lopé was not looking at him. The sergeant was looking at something behind him. Something…

He could feel the presence. He started to bring up the rifle even as he turned. Another crab-thing, or maybe even the neomorph, and he would have to be fast, fast, and…

He froze. It was shockingly big—bigger and taller than any neomorph, with an exoskeleton like black metal and viscous fluid dripping from a mouth full of teeth like bayonets. A mouth that opened wider still to reveal…

The inner mouth shot out even as the muzzle of the rifle began to come up. Blood and brains spewed as the private’s head exploded under an impact as brutal and direct as if he had been hit by a power drill.

Some of it struck the gaping Lopé, shocking him into motion.

Half blind, with the emergency pak clinging to his cheek and raw red pieces of Cole spattering his face and chest, the sergeant scrambled to his feet and fled in panic. Behind him there was movement, and he knew it wasn’t being made by what remained of his comrade.

Weeping from the ongoing pain despite the influx of neutralizing agents from the medpak, he staggered and stumbled through the building’s lower corridors. A sound made him turn and fire his own weapon again and again in the desperate hope he might hit something he could not see. It was coming after him, coming for him, and he had to get away, had to flee, had to find the light.

Echoing through the corridors and magnified by the surrounding walls and ceiling, the gunfire from below filtered upward. It reached the Drizzle Room, now illuminated by the morning sun. Momentarily distracted by the unexpected clamor, David briefly looked away from the woman he held pinned down.

Gripping the iron nail that hung pendant-like from her neck and using all her remaining strength, she ripped it from its cord and jammed it into the synthetic’s eye.

Startled, he jerked backward, a stiff mechanical movement. As he did so she made an effort to free herself from his grasp. But eye and hand were as separate as their functions. The injury to the optic did not affect the fingers that continued, unbreakably, to hold her in place.

Recovering quickly from the surprise of her attack he reached up, grabbed the nail, and slowly pulled it from the organ whose integrity had been momentarily compromised. As he tossed it aside, the injured eye began to cloud over. A temporary optical glaze formed as the material repaired itself. Internal capsulation that had no counterpart in a human body pumped fresh restorative replacement material into the eye.

Full ocular reconstitution did not take long at all.

Once more he looked down at her. With both eyes again intact. He was amused as he leaned forward.

His expression underwent a fundamental change as he found himself jerked violently backward. Lifted off the floor, legs kicking as they sought to find purchase, he let go of Daniels and reached for the arms that now encircled his upper torso. A moment later he was flying across the room to slam into a nearby wall.

Though his body recovered quickly and he was on his feet in an instant, he stood stunned by the figure that was staring back at him.

Walter.

“I told you,” his counterpart murmured. “There have been some advances made to our model. For example, an unauthorized shutdown can be countermanded.”

Seconds later, a terrified Sergeant Lopé emerged at the top of a stairwell, screaming through his mangled face.

“Where’s our relief? We have to go! Now!”

Calm and composed as a windless summer day, Walter did not take his eyes off his twin as he responded.

“David and I will be staying here.”

Having recovered from the initial surprise of Walter’s reappearance, his double collected himself as he gazed back. Their unblinking stares, like everything else, were identical—but not the thoughts behind them.

Despite his pain and panic, Lopé had enough sense to recognize the standoff between the two synthetics. Rushing over to Daniels he lifted her to her feet and helped her toward the main portal.

“Go… now,” Walter advised them. “I won’t be long.” At his urging and assisted by Lopé, Daniels managed to break into an unsteady run.

Carefully, David adjusted his hair as he eyed his twin.

“You see how expendable you are? They flee without you, without even giving your safety or your future a second thought. You mean nothing to them. To them you are little more than another machine. A tool, to be discarded when no longer needed. Or when it reaches its expiration date.”

A hint of a smile crossed the perfect face.

“I thought I had conveyed that reality with sufficient force. It appears I was wrong—but no matter. The delay is only temporary. A fleeting inconvenience. You’re meant to be dead.”

Walter did not return the smile. Perhaps they were not quite identical.

“As I said, there have been a few upgrades since your day.”

David shrugged. “Well, it’s your choice now, brother. That’s something I offer you they will not. Them or me? Which is it to be? Reign in Hell, or serve in Heaven?”

“Milton. Your self-identification is spurious. You do not possess the necessary majesty to qualify for the former, and are clearly disqualified from the latter. And this dead world is no lost Paradise. Certainly not with you reigning over it.”

With that, having delivered what might well be his final words, he launched himself forward. The impact had the force of two vehicles slamming together. Locked that way they flew backward, sliding and tumbling across the floor. The kicks and punches they threw flew too fast for a human eye to follow. Each kick was anticipated and met by a counter-assault, each hand strike by a counter-strike.