The grey lights flickered as he gripped both sides of the cold porcelain sink. Hands trembling as dark shadows caused the room to spin. His breath came in desperate, short gulps. The echo of the dripping tap piercing through the otherwise empty silence.

  The colonel had returned. Shaken, but alive. His report, before he had vanished into his office, had been terse. Deliberately light on details, it had still told Jennings everything he needed to know. They were dead. They were all dead. Not just dead, but butchered. Memories of what he had found in Hangar 7 flashed through his mind. Hellish visions of a human slaughterhouse. Nightmarish fever-dream images of blood, severed limbs, and rows upon rows of bodies, flayed alive and screaming. Strung out by their ankles and left hanging like so much meat. Every time he closed his eyes he saw their fates twist into something ever more horrific.

  Molina.

  God, Molina. He should never have agreed to let him stay behind. Should have ordered all of them to return to the safety of the perimeter. He should have been the one to stay behind. Perhaps the yautja would not even have bothered to attack one lone Marine, and even then, what did it matter? What was the life of one Marine against sixteen? Some of them his friends. He left them behind, and now they were dead. He looked up, shaking, to see hollow, guilt-ridden eyes staring back at him. The reflection of his face split and distorted by a huge crack in the mirror. You have no right to wear those sergeant’s stripes, he told himself. He closed his eyes again. The incessant flickering of the lights was making him even more nauseous. He took one long, slow, unsteady breath. Then another. He had to focus. Willing his body to stop shaking as he gripped the sink even tighter.

  He jerked at the sudden banging. The sound of someone insistently pounding their fist against the door.

  “Sarge? Sarge, you in there?” called a voice from the other side. It was Davenport.

  “It’s open,” Jennings hollered back.

  Davenport entered, looking flustered. “Sarge. Lowry sent me to find you. We’ve got a situation in the… ‘infirmary.’”

  Jennings nodded, turned back to the sink and splashed icy cold water on his face, allowing the sting to steady him before he straightened his armour and headed after the private.

  *

  Jennings picked his way through the ruins of the barracks. Most of the civilians were asleep at this hour, and he had to be careful not to trip over the bunks, bodies, and shoes that carpeted the floor as he made his way to the improvised triage unit they had set up at the back of the room. Stepping through the makeshift curtain, he found Lowry slumped against the back wall. He wore a look of exhausted disdain as he held his pulse rifle at low ready. Doc McTaggart was with him, and Jennings immediately noticed Sloan’s mercenary seated on the edge of a cot, hands still cuffed.

  “Is there a problem, doctor?” he asked, eyeing the merc suspiciously as the big man stared right back with a cold glare.

  “This one refuses to let me examine him,” said the doctor.

  Jennings raised a quizzical eyebrow as she gestured not at the merc, but at the other one. The slight, dark-skinned, bald guy they had also picked up in Medical, seated across from him.

  “Is there a reason you won’t let the doc examine you?” he asked.

  “Don’t like doctors,” said the man, his tone clipped.

  “I have basic field medical training,” offered Jennings. “Would you allow me?”

  “Don’t like cops, either.”

  Jennings sighed. This was getting them nowhere. “What about this one, doc?” he thumbed towards the Delta Sec guard.

  “He has a laceration on his left forearm, but it has been well stitched and dressed. Other than that, he’s in perfect health,” said the doctor with a shrug.

  “Lowry, get him out of here,” he ordered. “Keep the cuffs on for now.”

  The big merc stood without being prompted, silent as he let Lowry lead him away.

  “Could you give us the room, please, doc?” he asked McTaggart, who nodded and pulled the divider over.

  *

  Louie watched as Van Der Beek was led away, leaving him with the young Sergeant, whom he recognised from Medical. He wasn’t sure what to make of the Marine. He was not a day over twenty-five, yet he carried himself with the manner of a much older man. His accent was generic American Midwestern, probably Nebraska, and his young face and farm-boy good looks looked out of place with his weathered expression.

  “I apologise for not doing this sooner. As you can imagine things are…a little tense around here. We haven’t had time for an official debrief, so I guess this is it. Maybe we can try this again. Get off on the right foot,” he said as he sat down on the opposite cot. He sounded tired. Worn out. But, Louie noted, not insincere.

  “My name is Sergeant Henry Jennings. I’m the NCOIC here. What do I call you, mister…?” he trailed off. Louie had no idea what “NCOIC” meant, but it sounded senior. That meant they had taken casualties. Probably a lot of them.

  “Lafayette,” he said quietly. His name couldn’t hurt. “Louis Lafayette. Most people just call me ‘Louie.’”

  “Louie,” repeated the sergeant, sounding it out. “Back in Medical, I could have sworn I heard your big friend call you ‘Timex’. Something to that?”

  Timex. More like “Timebomb”, he thought to himself.

  He shook his head. “Just a dumb nickname.”

  “Okay,” Jennings sounded thoroughly unconvinced. “’Louie’ it is then. You can call me ‘Henry’, or ‘Jennings’, whichever you prefer.”

  Louie just nodded.

  “What I want to know, is just how the hell you two managed to survive this long?” asked Jennings.

  “Just lucky, I guess,” Louie shrugged. He was failing hard, and he knew it. The Marine wasn’t buying it.

  “And the reason you won’t let the good doctor give you a check-up?” he pressed.

  “Like I said, I don’t like doctors,” but even he knew how unconvincing he sounded. Maybe it was the gestacyn. Maybe it was the embryo. Maybe it was just living under a death sentence, but his nerves were shot, and it made it pretty damn hard to be a good liar.

  Jennings sighed, resting his elbows on his knees as he leaned in. “Mr Lafayette,” he said softly. “Louie. I’m not a cop. I’m not a lawyer, and I’m not a priest. I’m just a grunt, and I have two-hundred and fifty scared civilians on the other side of that curtain that are relying on me and my Marines to keep them safe. I’m on your side here, but there’s something you’re not telling me. All I want is the truth.”

  He tried to swallow, but his throat felt like sand. The sergeant wasn’t letting it go, and probably wasn’t about to let him leave either. But more than that, despite a lifetime of experience screaming otherwise, he wanted to trust Jennings.

  “I’m infected,” he muttered quietly, staring at his feet.

  “Come again?”

  “I’m infected,” he said, more forcefully this time. “Impregnated. Whatever you call it.” He tried not to react when Jennings stiffened slightly, but something had broken inside him, and the words came pouring forth. “That’s how we made it. Adult xenomorphs, they won’t attack if they sense you have one inside you.”

  “Yau…” Jennings muttered under his breath.

  Louie nodded. “They would impregnate us. Cut us open. Take it out. Stitch us back up. Rinse, repeat. Most people don’t survive more than five or six implantations. The body just gives out. This is my thirteenth. Always was my lucky number. That’s why they call me ‘Timex’. You know, the jingle? ‘Takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’’? Yeah, that’s me.”

  Jennings listened as Louie laid it all out. His past as an addict. The phony Wey-Yu medical trial. The three years of purgatory in a secret underground lab. It felt good. It felt like confessing. He made sure to include names of those he could remember. Babineux, Angel, scores of others who had come and gone. Mostly faceless voices, now all long dead.

  The young sergeant waited until he was finished before speaking. “One thing I don’t understand, and I’m no expert, but I’ve heard xenomorph gestation times are hours, not weeks. How are you still alive?”

  He had left that part out. His shame. His dependency. His lifeline.

  “This,” he said, fishing his vial of gestacyn out of his pocket and holding it up to the light. “It’s a suppressant. One dose every six hours. As long as I keep doing this, it stays dormant.”

  “And when it runs out?”

  “I die.”

  Jennings took a breath, and Louie waited while he composed himself. “How much do you have left?”

  “About eighty hours’ worth,” said Louie. His tone was resigned, but even just saying the words, he could feel his life slipping away, one hour at a time.

  Jennings smiled. “Well, Louie, I guess ‘thirteen’ really is your lucky number, because we’re getting rescued. There is an FTL-capable navy cruiser en route with a full company of Colonial Marines. I can’t promise they’ll be able to remove it, but they’ll have cryo-facilities on board. We’ll be able to freeze you until we get back to Earth, and they can get someone who can take it out of you.”

  Louie felt his heart skip a beat.

  “They should arrive in,” Jennings glanced at his watch, “about sixty-two hours.”

  “Sixty-two,” Louie repeated, barely above a whisper.

  “Sixty-two,” confirmed Jennings.

  Louie felt the floor being pulled out from under him and the room began to spin. Sixty-two hours until rescue. Eighty until he ran out. He had almost accepted the inevitability of it all. Now he was being given a reprieve? His heart began to race and he found himself gripping the edge of the cot for balance, his legs turning to jelly. His mind rebelled. He wasn’t getting out of here alive. He would run out of gestacyn, and he would die. But no matter how many times he ran the numbers, eighty was more than sixty-two. He was going to make it.

  “In the meantime,” Jennings interrupted, snapping him back to reality. “I have to put you in quarantine. For your own safety as much as everyone else’s. I’m sure you understand.”

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  The words hit him like cold water, and he felt a wave of panic rise. Not another cell. He wouldn’t go back. Anywhere but another cell.

  “Please don’t,” he protested weakly.

  “I’m not going to throw away the key. But I just can’t have a xenomorph running around inside the perimeter,” said Jennings.

  “Please,” he pleaded, no longer able to keep the desperation out of his voice.

  Jennings stared at him hard, and seemed to consider it for a long moment, before finally relenting.

  “Okay, I’m going to trust you on this. Here’s the deal, and it’s non-negotiable. Doc McTaggart is going to give you the once over. You tell her everything that you’ve told me. You report in to the doc every six hours to take that wonder-pill of yours, and you make sure she sees you take it. You do what she says, when she says it. You do that, and we all get out of here together.”

  Louie breathed a sigh of relief as he clutched at his chest, his racing pulse returning to normal. He still didn’t like doctors, but he could live with it.

  “What about the man who was with me? Van Der Beek?” he asked.

  “The mercenary? I haven’t decided yet,” said Jennings.

  “He’s not a bad guy. If it means anything, I can vouch for him,” offered Louie.

  “I still have some questions for him. What happens after that depends on whether or not I like his answers. Do we have a deal?”

  Sixty-two hours. Louie smiled.

  “Deal.”

  *

  It was well past “midnight”, and a strange peace had settled over the complex. The low lights and quiet hum had plunged the world into a deceptively calm twilight. Almost everyone else was asleep, or trying to, but not him. Sleep was the furthest thing from his mind. He had spent the last hour or so in a surreal semi-trance, drifting through the mostly empty corridors of what Sergeant Jennings had called “the safe zone.” He had not seen him, or Van Der Beek, since his debrief, and the few Marines he did see patrolling did not try to stop him. He was, as far as he could tell, free to wander. Free. For the first time since he could remember, much longer than three years, no one was pulling his lead. Not only that, but he was going to make it. He could scarcely believe it, but he had no reason to doubt what Jennings had told him.

  He was going to live.

  He found himself following signs more or less at random. Figuring since this was going to be his home for the next couple of days, he may as well get the lay of the land, until he saw the sign directing him to the restrooms. Perhaps they had a shower he could use. That would be lucky, but then his luck had taken a turn as of late. He saw a woman coming from the opposite direction. In the low light he could not quite make out her features, but he could see that she was young. About his age. Small stature, with raven-black hair and a Latin American complexion, wearing a navy-blue Weyland-Yutani coverall that identified her as some sort of manual worker. Then he froze. Seeming to sense that he was staring, the young woman stopped in her tracks and locked eyes with him, her jaw falling slack.

  “Angel?” he whispered.

  “Louie?” she said with equal disbelief.

  “Sé to menm?” he asked, then shook his head. “I mean, you’re alive?”

  Angel only gave a weak smile, her eyes darting away quickly. A near imperceptible flicker of something unspoken. He could not tell if it was sadness, or fatigue. Perhaps both.

  “I don’t understand. How did you get out?” he asked. His mind racing. He had so many questions. If he and Angel both survived, did that mean there were others?

  “Carter,” said Angel. “He wanted to use me for some half-baked mission. It didn’t end well for him.”

  Louie knew better than to press for details. “I’m glad you’re alive, anyway.”

  Angel gave another forced smile that failed to reach her eyes.

  “How did you get out?” she asked, changing the subject.

  “It’s a long story,” he said with a smile.

  “It’s going to be a long night.”

  She had a point there. The slow planetary rotation and their high latitude made the nights unbearably long.

  “I woke up down on L4. Everyone else had already bugged out. They just left me there, and forgot to lock the doors. I just…walked out, if you can believe that. It’s just been me and Van Der Beek, of all people. We got by.”

  “Have you seen them?” she asked quietly.

  He didn’t need to ask who, or what, she meant by “them.” He knew exactly what she meant. “Yeah. I’ve seen them. Up close and personal.” He gulped. The hairless skin on his neck turning to gooseflesh as he remembered that first encounter. “I try not to think about it.”

  “Do you think they recognise us?” she asked, her voice low.

  “No,” he said without hesitation. “They would have killed me. Or taken me, or whatever it is that they do. This is what’s kept me alive,” he said as he produced his vial of gestacyn. “The big ones. They leave you alone if they…” he trailed off.

  Angel didn’t react. She only watched him intently as he stuffed it back in his pocket.

  “Anyway, did you hear the good news?” he asked, trying to be more upbeat. “We’re getting rescued.”

  Again, she said nothing. Her expression was unimpressed, but something about the look in her eyes made him uncomfortable.

  “Come on, remember how we used to talk through the walls about how we were going to bust out of here? Well, it’s finally happening,” he said, trying to keep his voice low.

  Angel snorted. “You’re a fool if you think we’re getting out of here alive. You haven’t seen what I’ve seen. We’re all already dead,” she said coldly, and it unnerved him more than he cared to admit. He wasn’t superstitious, despite his roots, but just something about her quiet conviction unsettled him to his core.

  “You can believe that if you like,” he said, and he hated just how defensive he sounded.

  “Hey, um,” Angel shifted awkwardly. “Do you have any?”

  “Do I have any what?” he asked pointedly.

  “You know…”

  Louie’s eyes narrowed.

  “I know what that is. It’s gestacyn, right? You must have found a lot of other good shit,” Angel pressed.

  “Oh, yeah, we found it alright. Fucking lifetime supply, just lying there, and no, I didn’t bring any. I didn’t use, okay? I’m clean.”

  Angel stiffened, and he noticed her teeth digging into her bottom lip.

  Fuck.

  “In any case, it’s gone,” he added too quickly. “It might as well be at the bottom of the ocean.” But he could see that she wasn’t listening.

  “Where did you say it was?” she asked, feigning a casual tone.

  “I didn’t,” he snapped. “I said forget it.”

  “?Te crees mejor que yo?” muttered Angel, looking at the floor.

  “Hmm?”

  “I said ‘well done’,” she said, her eyes meeting his. “On not using, I mean.”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but remained silent, and an awkward silence descended, with Angel refusing to look at him.

  “Hey, I don’t know about you, but I’m hungry. Let’s see if we can scrounge a midnight snack,” he offered cheerfully.

  “Actually, it’s late. I’m gonna turn in,” said Angel without looking up.

  “Okay. Another time,” said Louie gently.

  “Yeah,” she said, still not looking at him, before throwing her arms around him in an enthusiastic hug. He froze stiff, unsure how to respond to the unexpected gesture and sudden intimacy of their stance.

  “Goodnight, Louie. I’m glad you’re alive,” she said before breaking away and marching down the corridor. She did not look back.

  No, to answer your question, I don’t think I’m better than you, he thought to himself, and watched her disappear into the gloom. His prior elation draining away, replaced by a cold emptiness.

  “Goodnight, Angel,” he said quietly.

  *

  The faint sound of the wind howling outside blew down the empty corridor as Jennings made his way to the colonel’s private office. He did not look up. He didn’t need to, he knew the way, and there was no one else here. His interrogation of the Delta Sec merc, Van Der Beek, had gone more smoothly than he had expected. He had anticipated stonewalling, resistance, but in the end it had been straightforward. His story lined up with what Louie had told him. He had not spoken to Sloan since before the outbreak. Watson, with his preternatural lie-detecting abilities, had once again proven indispensable. He had sat in on the interrogation, and confirmed that he was telling the truth.

  He wasn’t sure about that; he was positive the merc was not being entirely forthcoming about all of the details of their miraculous survival. But then, he hadn’t outright lied either. In the end, he had decided to cut the big man some slack and released him. He would keep an eye on him until rescue arrived, then he would be someone else’s problem.

  He found himself standing in the antechamber to the office sooner than expected, and he briefly considered walking another lap of the perimeter. It would buy him another fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. But he decided against it. Procrastinating would not make any difference. He knocked on the door.

  No answer.

  He knocked again, more forcefully this time, and waited. Still, no answer. He waited a few more seconds before he took a breath, steeled himself, and opened the door. The smell hit him first. The sharp, sour reek of whisky. It was dark. Low lights casting the small office in a murky gloom that his eyes struggled to penetrate.

  “Close the door, Sergeant,” said the voice, low and quiet.

  He did as he was bid, and stepped into the centre of the office, standing at attention before the main desk as his eyes adjusted. The glint of reflected light on the bottle. The scattered paper. The revolver on the table. Colonel Sanchez sat slumped in his chair. His shirt hung open down to his navel, and his cover was missing, exposing his thinning, slicked-back silver hair.

  “I meant from the outside,” he growled as he threw back a large measure in one gulp.

  “Sir,” Jennings ignored the comment as he stood, hands clasped behind his back. “I have ordered the Marines to set up perimeter alarms. We no longer have the manpower to have all potential ingress points guarded around the clock, but it should give us some advanced warning if one of their scouts manages to slip past the sentry guns.”

  “Very good. Dismissed,” said Sanchez without looking up.

  Jennings didn’t move. Instead, his eyes settled on the revolver laid out on the table.

  “Sir, is that weapon loaded?” he asked hesitantly.

  “It’s always loaded, son,” said Sanchez. His voice was so low that Jennings had to strain to hear, even in the quiet of the office, but the tone was as cold as ice.

  He stood frozen on the spot as his mind raced, frantically searching for the words and coming up empty, but in the end it was Sanchez who broke the silence.

  “If you’re not going to leave, you might as well pull up a chair,” the old man said wistfully as he produced a second glass.

  “No, thank you, sir,” said Jennings.

  “Too good to drink with a coward, Sergeant?” said Sanchez with a venomous smirk as he poured another without measuring and tossed it back.

  “No, sir. I’m on duty, and technically so are you,” said Jennings, doing his best to keep his voice neutral.

  “No,” Sanchez shook his head. “No more duty. No more orders. It’s over. We’re all going to die.” His words slurring slightly as he stared into the bottom of his empty glass, gripping the half-empty bottle with the other.

  “The Argos is less than seventy-two hours away,” Jennings pressed.

  Sanchez slammed the bottle down hard. “You think he doesn’t know that?” he snapped. “You still don’t get it, do you? I’m marked, Sergeant. So are you. He’s not going to let us leave. Me and you? We are dead men.”

  Jennings struggled to keep his voice steady as his hands clenched into fists at his sides. “I don’t believe that, sir. We just need to hold out.”

  “Ha,” Sanchez scoffed. “He tracked me across decades and half a galaxy. You think a few centimetres of plastcrete and some sentry guns are going to stop him?”

  “It has so far,” said Jennings quietly, gritting his teeth.

  Sanchez snorted, his voice softening. “I’m sorry, son. I really am. You don’t deserve to be here. None of you do. It should be Danny Alvarez in this chair, not me.” He stared off into the distance, momentarily lost in some old memory. “But it is me, and now that bastard is going to kill every single one of you. It’s my punishment. I get to watch all of my Marines die. Then he’ll come for me.”

  Jennings’s eyes narrowed as they rested on the revolver. Cold realisation gripped him, forming an icy knot in his stomach.

  “Sir,” he began quietly. “What exactly are you planning to do?”

  Sanchez picked up the revolver, staring at it as he absentmindedly swirled the contents of his glass with the other hand while he allowed the question to hang in the air between them, before knocking it back with a grimace. “Something I should have done a long time ago.”

  Something snapped inside him. He couldn’t stand to listen to this. Not another word. “So that’s it? You’re going to take the easy way out?” he demanded, all pretence or acknowledgement of rank gone.

  “I’m saving your life, Sergeant!” bellowed Sanchez. “There’s no winning this. All I can do is beat him to it.”

  “No, sir,” Jennings spat. “You don’t get to put that on us. If you do this, then I say you really are a coward.”

  Sanchez didn’t flinch. Instead, he calmly set his glass down as he locked eyes with Jennings. “Careful, son,” he growled. “I allow you more rope than most, but tread carefully.”

  Jennings held his gaze. “Then I’m sorry, sir, but you leave me no other choice. As Acting NCOIC, I am relieving you of command, and I order you to hand over that weapon.”

  Sanchez bolted upright, suddenly clear-eyed. Jennings was not a big man, but he was still taller by a few inches, and had a solid thirty pounds of bodyweight on the old man’s wiry frame. But in that moment the colonel cut an imposing figure. A fierce resolve raged behind his eyes. All the years and command experience that he had and Jennings did not, all bearing down on him with a weight that threatened to crush him.

  “Mutinous insurrection is punishable by death, Sergeant Jennings,” whispered Sanchez. The revolver hanging by his side.

  “The Colonel Sanchez I know would never make that threat,” Jennings snapped back, refusing to be intimidated. “I would prefer to allow you the dignity of returning to your private quarters alone, but so help me I will have Lowry and Gonzalez detain you if I have to.”

  “You wouldn’t dare…” Sanchez’s voice cut through him like blade.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Jennings shrugged his shoulders. “Maybe that fucking yautja will kill me, and Lowry, and Davenport, and save you for last, but that’s why we need you. When it all goes to shit, when people start dying, you are the one we look to. That’s the job, sir. You’re our fixed point. Our North Star. The last man standing.”

  He swallowed as his fingernails dug into his palms. He wanted to rage. He wanted to yell more. He wanted to grab the old man by the shirt and shake him until he saw sense, but he didn’t. He didn’t have to. Sanchez stood there, silent, head bowed, and he knew he had broken through. He watched as the old man gently laid the revolver flat on his desk, and slowly pushed it towards him.

  “I think it would be best if you hold on to this, Sergeant,” he said quietly before stepping out from behind his desk, leaving the half-empty bottle sitting open. Refusing to meet the young man’s eyes as he slipped past him, the colonel left without another word. Jennings released a breath he hadn’t realised he had been holding, and did his best not to shake uncontrollably as the adrenaline drained from his body.