Foster, Alan Dean - Alien 04 - Alien Resurrection by Foster Alan Dean

Author:Foster, Alan Dean [Foster, Alan Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781783296743
Publisher: Titan
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

10

Cloning storage facility? Ripley read the sign over the final lab they had to traverse, but the words didn’t really register. She was still on point.

Distephano went to one of the consoles; his hands moved over the controls. “We’re past the moons of Jupiter,” he told them.

Ripley knew she should feel some sense of urgency, some compelling sense of action, but the only thing driving her was self-preservation. Like any animal, she thought with bitter acceptance. Just like them. She moved her mind away from the Aliens, fearing they might sense her if she did. How long would they be too occupied to come for her?

They passed in front of yet another in an endless series of doors, with legends on them that were meaningless to Ripley. But at the next door—

She suddenly froze.

There was something in there. Someone in there.

In spite of the bottomless emptiness Ripley felt—had been feeling since her birth—she suddenly experienced a ripple of fear. Her senses on hyperalert, she turned back to the door. On the glass window inset in the door was a sign.

1—7.

Slowly, she turned and approached the door, staring at the inscription.

Looking down, she pulled the shirt away from her inner arm and stared at the number—8.

Just walk away, she told herself. Just move. She closed her eyes, a shudder traveling over her body. There was something terrible behind that door, and it had to do with her.

Distephano had moved away from the console and gone ahead of her. “That’s not the way,” he said helpfully.

Christie stepped beside her, obviously worried by her strange behavior. “Ripley, we got no time for sightseeing.”

It didn’t matter. They could go on without her. She knew that she had to go in there.

Suddenly, Wren was there. Even he sounded worried. “Ripley… don’t.”

She had to. She opened the door, stood there for a moment, her mind trying to come to grips with what she knew she was about to see.

All this time, she’d worried about her lack of feelings, her lack of humanity. And suddenly, she was flooded with feelings, drowning in them.

Pain. Horror. Disgust. Remorse. Heartrending sorrow.

The others hung back in the doorway, confused, but clearly unwilling to go on without her.

Ripley found herself staring at a room full of incubators. No, not incubators, not anymore.

Preservation units. High-tech storage jars. For my sisters.

The first unit held an organism the size of a fully developed human fetus. It was totally deformed, barely recognizable, as it floated in its preservative liquid. It was labeled Number 1.

Not “it,” Ripley told herself, she. She touched the jar reverently, and moved on.

The next unit, marked Number 2 was the size of a small child. It, too, was grossly deformed, half Alien and half human. Ellen Ripley’s face on that terrible, elongated head. Dorsal horns erupted from her back. Ripley twitched her shoulders, feeling the scars alongside her own spine.

Number 3 had a tail and no face. She was about two years old.

Number 4 was about four years old, had an exoskeleton, and the rigid, fanged tongue, emerging from a half-human face that couldn’t support it.

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