Part 5: Kin

D16 let the vents take her away from the area and for a moment she had no idea where she was going as long as she got away from the immediate threat. Once she was satisfied that she had, she paused to take in her surroundings, letting her senses show her the rooms outside of the vents. They all seemed the same so far, with no humans or anything else in sight.

She tried to listen after her Queen, whom she hadn't heard since being a hatchling. But even as she tilted her head slightly upwards and stood perfectly still, she couldn't pick up anything from her leader. The Queen wasn't dead, she sensed as much. But she was silent, so she couldn't give out any orders.

D16 lowered her head again, before she continued to run forward, the faint clicking of claws against metal echoing through the vent. She didn't stop until she picked up something strange with her senses. Even though she had never seen it before, she recognized it as something of her own kind, as she paused in the vent and checked the room she had ended up in.

It was empty when it came to humans, so she walked forward a bit to find the weakest part of the ventilation before she sliced through with her claws and then tore it open entirely. She knew enough of the humans by now to know that they didn't necessarily need to be around to still cause harm, so she carefully crept out on the wall.

According to her senses, the room was pitch-black, except for the blue lights at the door in the other end of the heavily fortified cargo room. The cargo was the interesting part, as it seemed to contain the familiar scent she had picked up.

D16 dropped from the roof, landing on all four on one of the small containers, before she crept around it, finding no easy way inside it. There was a hatch with a number panel etched to it. She recognized this as a device that only the humans could use.

She hissed quietly in puzzlement, slashing against the cargo a few times with both claws and tail. The noise echoed across the room, throwing vibrations everywhere and she stopped quickly enough, her head aimed right at the cargo for several minutes, as her brain tried to process this delicate situation.

The cargo needed to be opened; it was a big part of any lone Xenomorph survival instinct to make sure as soon as possible that they didn't remain alone for long. With the Queen silenced, she would need to act on her own instincts.

Her memories quickly brought up one of the tests that the human Matt had thrown at her, where he had been testing the Xenomorphs acid blood. This container was composed of the very same material he had watched her blood sip through.

Injuring herself made no sense in her mind, beyond gaining a valuable ally. It was enough. Her tail moved forward before she sliced the upper part of her forearm, the yellow acid already dripping down from her black skin. Hissing, she dragged her arm across one of the edges on the container. The acid quickly dissolved the material, creating a deep enough hole for her to grab the edges with both hands and tear loose a large chunk of the container's side.

The smell from the box was familiar even though she had never sensed any of her own kind up close. The box contained one of the Queen's eggs, unhatched and unharmed.

D16 let out a long hiss, her tail moving behind her constantly, as she waited for the egg to hatch. As the Xenomorph inside sensed the vibrations as well as she did, plus her own scent, it took only a few minutes for its hatching instinct to be triggered. The slime around the egg dripped down along the container's side as it opened.

She looked around, her senses picking up humans nearby, in a small room next to this one. She couldn't see a possible way for them to get inside this room from where they were… but still something bad was spreading across the roof.

The Xenomorph looked up as the sound of something activating up in the corners of the roof was heard. Not staying to find out what it was, she reached into the egg and pulled out the slimy hatchling from it. The facehugger secured itself around her hand and arm with its tail well enough to remain steady, even as the adult alien moved.

D16 didn't wait, as she hurried to the same vent she had entered the room from before, already feeling a bit dizzy, so it was clearly gas they were pumping out into the room. She managed to get inside the ventilation system again though, carrying the facehugger in one hand. Due to this she moved a bit more slowly through the vents than normally, but still made it far away from the effects of the gas.

Her body did feel slower than normal, so she stayed for a while, dropping the facehugger to the floor of the ventilation shaft. It remained on the spot, until she hissed quietly. The hatchling moved up on her, holding on to her back right between the back spines there.

The humans were clearly after her still so her first priority was to get this facehugger to a victim, so she could be joined by more of her kin. Finding a solitary human was easy with her senses and access to the whole facility via the vents. At least for now.

It didn't take long for her to follow the various human scents that was giving her a perfect map of their locations and she paused by one of the rooms that seemed to serve as a sleeping quarter.

The targeted human was a woman sleeping in one of the many bunk beds and there didn't seem to be anyone else in the room for now. D16 merely entered the room from the roof, slowly crawling her way down to the floor and next to the human.

The facehugger on her back had sensed the human, wasting no time in getting of D16's back and plant itself right on the woman's face. By the time she could react, the tail was already tight around her throat and very soon she became limp as all hosts did when under the effects of a facehugger.

Once the process was complete, D16 grabbed the human to carry her into the vents as carefully as she could to avoid any damage to the human, beyond accidently dislodging one of the shoulders. The fact the vents were just large enough for a human was fortunate and provided less risk for the facehugger to fail its incubation.

After a while she stopped by a small, dark storage room, placing the body in it. At the floor another ventilation system was visible, which would give the chestburster a chance to escape once it had hatched

It wasn't the safest place, but D16's care for another of her kin only went this far. By now, it was more important to find the Queen than to babysit a newborn hatchling that could after all take care of itself if need be. If the hatchling was lucky, the host wouldn't wake up until it was too late and it couldn't move out of the room.

D16 returned quickly to the upper ventilation system, returning to her task of finding where the Queen had gone.