The Complete Alien Collection: Symphony of Death (The Cold Forge, Prototype, Into Charybdis) E-Book

Alex White

• Herausgeber: Titan Books
• Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Seitenzahl: 1472

Beschreibung

Collected together for the first time, this action-packed omnibus is filled with secrets, lies, and the silver smile of the deadly Xenomorphs. Across three epic novels, see how the Xenomorph doctrine of Weyland-Yutani and Venture is a short and angry road to hell. Cold Forge With the failure of Hadley's Hope, Weyland-Yutani has suffered a devastating setback—the loss of the Xenomorphs they aggressively sought to exploit. Yet there's a reason the company rose to the top. True to form, they have a redundancy already in place… the facility known as The Cold Forge. When Dorian Sudler is sent to assess their progress, he discovers that there's a spy aboard—someone who doesn't necessarily act in the company's best interests. If unmasked, this person may be forced to destroy the entire station… and everyone on board. That is, if the Xenomorphs don't do the job first. Prototype Corporate spy Tamar Prather steals a steals a Xenomorph egg from Weland-Yutani, taking it to a lab run by Venture, a direct rival to the Weyland-Yutani corporation. Unaware of the dangers it poses, the scientists come to an inevitable conclusion: they need a human test subject… Former Colonial Marine Zula Hendricks has been tasked with training personnel to deal with anything that gets thrown their way. Yet nothing can them prepare them for the horror that breaks out of Venture's lab. Unless stopped, it will kill every human being on the planet. Into Charybdis It was supposed to be an easy job for "Shy" Hunt and the McAllen Integrations crew: set up environmental systems for the brand new Hasanova Data Solutions colony, an Iranian state-owned colony built on the abandoned complex known as "Charybdis." But the ruins have a darker history than any could imagine, and its depths harbor deadly secrets. The deeper they dig, the more Shy is convinced there's no one they can believe. When a bizarre ship lands on a nearby island, one of the workers is attacked by a taloned creature, and trust evaporates between the Iranians and Americans. The McAllen integrations crew are imprisoned, accused as spies, but manage to send out a distress signal... to the Colonial Marines.

Leseprobe

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Leave us a Review

Copyright

Book One: The Cold Forge

Dedication

1: Line Items

2: Arrival

3: The Kennels

4: Plagiarus Praepotens

5: Rescue Puppies

6: Smoke & Mirrors

7: Wild Dogs

8: Truth Will Out

9: Adrenaline

10: Service & Servers

11: Viable Countermeasures

12: Quarantine Protocol

13: Lockbox

14: Severance Package

15: Escape Clause

16: Exposure

17: Flight

18: Reset

19: Lines of Communication

20: Distractions

21: Going Missing

22: Decisions

23: True Colors

24: Extinguished

25: Never, Never

26: Daedalus, Who Built the Labyrinth

27: Invigoration

28: The freezer

29: Vehicular Homicide

30: Operator Error

31: The Hard Way

32: Masterpiece

33: Ribbon Cutting

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Book Two: Prototype

Dedication

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

26

27

28

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Book Three: Into Charybdis

Part I: Firstin, First Out

1: Startup

2: Birds of Paradise

3: Plans

4: Touchdown

5: Diplomacy

6: Negotiations

7: As Above, So Below

8: Red Carpet

9: Castle of Night

10: Departures

11: Distress Call

Part II: Soldier On

12: Black Drop

13: Rescue

14: Emergence

15: Cover

16: Connection

17: Doors and Locks

18: Failure Mode

19: Righteous Fury

Part III: Revenant

20: Exfiltration

21: Alarm Clock

22: Descent

23: Eye of the Storm

24: Insurrection

25: Bear Witness

26: Havoc

27: Flight

28: Vows

Part IV: Remains

29: A Gift for an Angel

30: Saved

31: Ossuary

32: Hell’s Heart

33: Vault of Heaven

34: A Bell Rings

35: Renaissance

Part V: Epilogue

Deliverance

Acknowledgements

About the Author

THE COMPLETE ALIENTM LIBRARY FROM TITAN BOOKS

The Official Movie Novelizations

by Alan Dean FosterAlien, Aliens™, Alien 3, Alien: Covenant,Alien: Covenant Origins

Alien: Resurrectionby A.C. Crispin

Alien 3: The Unproduced Screenplayby William Gibson & Pat Cadigan

Alien

Out of the Shadowsby Tim LebbonSea of Sorrowsby James A. MooreRiver of Painby Christopher GoldenThe Cold Forgeby Alex WhiteIsolationby Keith R.A. DeCandidoPrototypeby Tim WaggonerInto Charybdisby Alex WhiteColony Warby David BarnettInferno’s Fallby Philippa BallantineEnemy of My Enemyby Mary SanGiovanni

The Rage War

by Tim LebbonPredator™: Incursion, Alien: InvasionAlien vs. Predator™: Armageddon

Aliens

Bug Huntedited by Jonathan MaberryPhalanxby Scott SiglerInfiltratorby Weston OchseVasquezby V. CastroBishopby T.R. Napper

The Complete Aliens Omnibus

Volumes 1–7

Aliens vs. Predators

Ultimate Preyedited by Jonathan Maberry & Bryan Thomas SchmidtRift Warby Weston Ochse & Yvonne Navarro

The Complete Aliens vs. Predator Omnibusby Steve Perry & S.D. Perry

Predator

If It Bleedsedited by Bryan Thomas SchmidtThe Predatorby Christopher Golden & Mark MorrisThe Predator: Hunters and Huntedby James A. MooreStalking Shadowsby James A. Moore & Mark MorrisEyes of the Demonedited by Bryan Thomas Schmidt

The Complete Predator Omnibusby Nathan Archer & Sandy Scofield

Non-Fiction

AVP: Alien vs. Predatorby Alec Gillis & Tom Woodruff, Jr.Aliens vs. Predator Requiem: Inside The Monster Shopby Alec Gillis & Tom Woodruff, Jr.Alien: The Illustrated Storyby Archie Goodwin & Walter SimonsonThe Art of Alien: Isolationby Andy McVittieAlien: The ArchiveAlien: The Weyland-Yutani Reportby S.D. PerryAliens: The Set Photographyby Simon WardAlien: The Coloring BookThe Art and Making of Alien: Covenantby Simon WardAlien Covenant: David’s Drawingsby Dane Hallett & Matt HattonThe Predator: The Art and Making of the Filmby James NolanThe Making of Alienby J.W. RinzlerAlien: The Blueprintsby Graham LangridgeAlien: 40 Years 40 ArtistsAlien: The Official Cookbookby Chris-Rachael OselandAliens: Artbookby Printed In BloodFind the Xenomorphby Kevin Crossley

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THE COMPLETE ALIEN COLLECTION: SYMPHONY OF DEATH

Print edition ISBN: 9781803366586

E-book edition ISBN: 9781803366593

Published by Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd

144 Southwark Street, London SE1 0UP

www.titanbooks.com

First edition: November 2023

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead (except for satirical purposes), is entirely coincidental.

© 2018, 2019, 2022 20th Century Studios.

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

BOOK ONE

THE COLD FORGE

To Stephen, Matt, and Kelsey: my Three Musketeers.I’m not sure which ones of you are which,though, so don’t ask.

1

LINE ITEMS

ENCRYPTED TRANSMISSION

LISTENING POST AED1413-23

DATE: 2179.07.20

(Unspecified A): Have located indigo flag.

(Unspecified B): How close are they?

(Unspecified A): Very.

(Unspecified B): Acknowledged. Execute.

Dorian Sudler knows he shouldn’t smoke.

Jana, the shipyard doctor, complains about it every time she sees him. She’ll be in to check on him before he goes down into his cryo pod, and he enjoys the look on her face when he does something she hates—pleasure from displeasure.

Maybe he should try to fuck her before going away. She’ll probably let him if he says he’s depressed about the looming year-long sleep. No, he has work to do before he goes under, and his bosses have expectations. Just as he shouldn’t smoke, the director of special resources shouldn’t be fraternizing with employees during an audit.

His quarters are nice, even if he hasn’t used his bed recreationally on this trip. He’s enjoyed painting the Earthrise, viewing it through the station’s large panoramic windows, the sharp blue heavy against the gray craters of the moon’s surface. It’s a lovely view, because it’s a reflection of the power and respect he deserves.

Dorian’s slender fingers flicker across the keyboard, running a query concerning the Luna shipyard rightsizing. He finds a healthy organization, green with profits and productivity, and he smiles. He’s cut off the dead leaves, and now life can grow anew. Weyland-Yutani stock will expand one tenth of a percentage point. If nine other directors do as well as him, trillions of dollars will slosh into Weyland-Yutani coffers.

Scanning through the line items, he looks for any last people on the cusp, people whose performance has been less than stellar. Thirty percent of the way down the page he finds Jana’s name, highlighted in yellow on his bowling chart. There were two major insurance claims this past month, and it is her job to head off those sorts of problems—like smoking, for instance. Dorian ticks off her name, running a simulated personnel roster with a fresh doctor, and finds fewer medical claims. He tags her to be fired by email, scheduling it to occur the week after next, once he is long gone. Luna security and human resources can handle the details.

He indicates “poor performance” as the cause.

On the fifty-seventh line he finds Alphonse Kanner, a branch manager in the turbine machining division. Alphonse killed himself last week when he learned of his impending termination at Dorian’s hands. The program lists Kanner as a wash, neither profitable nor a loss.

But that’s wrong.

Dorian snatches his cigarette out of the ashtray and sucks hard, burning it down to the bitter filter before stubbing it out with trembling hands. Smoke hisses out through his nose as he grits his teeth. The computer is wrong.

Alphonse Kanner has a two-million-dollar company life insurance policy, purchased on his eighteenth birthday. He made the payments and it continued in perpetuity, regardless of employment status. It would cost the banking division significantly more than the average loss of an employee. If he’d died due to an on-station accident, it would’ve been even worse.

Hands blur across the keyboard again. Dorian finds Kanner’s contract, signed and certified by some idiot more than two decades ago. Clicking from one link to the next, he locates the insurance policy, opens it, and rapidly scans the terms. He lets out a shaking breath, because he’s right, as always.

Suicide exempts Kanner from the payout. Even better, it came before he ratified the generous severance package they’d offered him. So no, Kanner isn’t a wash. He’s a two-million-dollar score that Dorian, not banking, brought home.

Muscles tense, Dorian rubs his clenched fists against his suit trousers. The banking operations unit will receive credit for the diminishing trend in payouts, but this is Dorian’s win. He considers adding a comment to the line item, perhaps firing off a message to his superiors, but he’s here to save billions, not millions. He can’t sweat the small stuff.

“Dorian.” A voice comes from his open door.

Jana is there, standing ready, clipboard in hand. He smiles, then considers his anger, and introduces a pained quirk to his lips. He needs to blow off some steam.

“You okay, buddy?”

Dorian shuts his computer screen. “Can I be honest for a moment?”

She places her hands on her hips and smirks. “This had better not be a last-minute pass.”

He stands, stretches out his arms, and strides over to her, his fine Italian shoes heel-toe clicking. He has an impressive height for such an avian frame. No one expects him to be as large or strong as he is—not when they see him at a distance. Jana ever so slightly draws her arms in close. He has wide shoulders, and when he is two paces away from her he thrusts his hands into his pockets, elbows out, thumbs hooked into his trousers. He wants her to know that he could surround her, devour her.

“I just wanted to talk… to you, specifically.” He gives her a practiced, pained smile. “Everyone hates me, doctor—I’m fully aware of it. I spend most of my days on a ship… mostly in cold sleep. Then I come out and rightsize an organization. Then I go back to sleep.”

She cocks an eyebrow, but doesn’t back away. He’s read her correctly.

“Everyone has a job to do,” she says.

“All I ever see are people’s personal tragedies.” Dorian’s gaze wanders out the window, as though he can’t make himself look her in the eye. He bites his lip. “You can smell it on me.”

But she’s smelling his something else. Scent is the strongest mnemonic, and he wonders what baggage comes with his.

“Cigarette smoke,” she says with a coy smile. “Not personal tragedies. And speaking of cigarettes, do you have another?”

Dorian’s eyes lock with hers, and he feigns a grin.

“I thought you didn’t smoke, Doctor.”

She shrugs and takes a step closer. “Everyone has a job to do. Mine is promoting a ‘healthy work environment,’ but I’m about to be off the clock.”

In all of her cajoling and admonishment, she’d been lying. How could he have missed that? What else had slipped past him? There’s a flash of heat in his gut—not lust, but anger. Between this and Kanner, the whole damned outpost ought to be scuttled. They’re doing things wrong.

“I’m not stupid, you know,” she says. The liar steps closer to him and touches the top of his tie. “I know what you want.” She hooks her finger into it, gently pulling it loose. “It’s obvious, and we’re probably never going to see each other again.”

The liar slips his tie free. She can’t see the fists at Dorian’s sides. She’s taken the power from him… or at least tried.

“I can settle for the cigarette after,” she says, moving in for a kiss. When her lips are almost upon his, he looks down his nose at her.

“You’ve misread the situation, Doctor,” he says. “I only wanted to talk to a friend, and this behavior is highly inappropriate.”

Her face flushes as mortification creeps in. She glows with the beauty of someone who has lost all leverage. Dorian feels a powerful urge to bed her in that second, but then she’ll assume he was insincere about “wanting to talk.” No, he can’t ruin this perfection.

She stammers something and turns away. It takes all his control to keep the smile from his face.

“I trust you can be professional about this,” he says. “Everyone makes mistakes.”

“Okay, yeah,” she says. “Yes, of course.”

“I’ll be in the cryo tube in an hour, and you can forget all about this unfortunate incident.”

Maybe Jana will be able to. Maybe he’ll remain a minor source of embarrassment for a few days, and then disappear from her mind. In two weeks the factory supervisor will call her into his office and gently break the news that she’s been let go.

Stepping through the door, she leaves, and he appends her termination order to state that she made a pass at him, which is inappropriate for a medical professional. Her termination letter indicates that she is not to collect unemployment insurance, or he will file a sexual harassment charge against her. Weyland-Yutani’s margins will improve an infinitesimal fraction of a percentage point.

Dorian checks his itinerary. His next stop is RB-232, his arrival a year from today. Whatever it is, it’s classified, and he’ll be briefed on site. The cause of his audit: “poor performance.” He reads further, and smiles.

There’s a problem on RB-232; it’s worth billions of dollars.

Closing his eyes, he takes a long breath, stilling his heart. Scientists are fun to fire. They think they’re too smart to be disposable. He’ll have that place running like oil on water in no time.

*   *   *

The chimpanzee is screaming again. It won’t go near the egg.

Blue Marsalis wonders how it knows that death awaits within. Her lab technicians have been so careful not to allow the animals to witness one another’s impregnations. Watching from her side of the thick tempered glass, she grows impatient with the beast. There’s a schedule to keep.

She would’ve restrained the chimp, anesthetized it, but in the past the resultant embryos were less than spectacular. She thinks of the old butchers’ tales, that a frightened sheep produces sour meat. The face-huggers prefer their meat sour, as do the snatchers that come from them.

“Get in there, you little shit,” Kambili Okoro, her regular lab assistant, says. He runs a rough hand over his stubble, pulling at his dark skin—a nervous habit.

“Keep it together,” she replies in a male voice not her own. This body doesn’t belong to her. “We can’t miss the moment.”

“Why don’t you just man up, go in there, and shove the bastards together?” he asks. “Those things usually leave androids alone.”

Blue stands up straighter and gives him a nasty look. This is the fourth time this week her lab tech has told her to “man up.” Kambili has been a consistent problem since he came to the Cold Forge, largely because he can’t be replaced. There are few Weyland-Yutani geneticists with his classified credentials, and even if there were more, the next crew rotation isn’t for another year. She’s stuck with him. He knows it.

“That’s a panicked chimpanzee,” Blue says. “It can apply six hundred kilograms of ripping strength, and do so with ease.”

Kambili shrugs, still watching through the sample collection area’s window. “So can you.”

“Have you ever had your arms ripped off?”

He sighs around his chewing gum. “Obviously not.”

“Marcus’s body is fully equipped with pain receptors. When that happens, I will feel it.”

“Then don’t let it happen,” he says.

Blue cocks her head and wrinkles her nose. “If I damage this body, I’m not going to be able to get around the station. It’s not like we get resupplied every day.” She pauses, and then adds, “I’d appreciate it if you’d stop with the ‘man up’ talk, too. I didn’t choose this body. It’s the one the Company provided.”

“Seems like you’re enjoying it,” he mumbles.

“What did you say?” she asks, but she heard him perfectly well. Blue’s ears pick up the lightest vibrations. She hates him for being right.

He gives her a glance, taking in her light complexion, strong jawline, and male build. She can tell he’s appraising her body—known as Marcus—and its many uses. These are things he has no right to consider. She’s seen it before from the other station personnel, and she hates him for it. His mouth widens into a grin, and he starts to laugh.

The screaming stops.

They missed the opening of the egg.

The chimp thrashes about on the ground, but already the face-hugger is delivering its lethal payload. The primate wraps a paw around the yellowed tail that encircles its neck, pulling with inhuman strength, but can’t budge it at all. Its slapping slows as the creature chokes it out, and it stumbles against the wall, sinking onto its belly.

It happens so fast, within the span of three breaths.

“Fuck!” Kambili says. “Go!” He slams the release button to flash freeze the chimp chamber. Jets of icy liquid nitrogen fill the space, instantly bringing the temperature down as Blue races around the console to get to the telesurgical systems. She sinks her arms into the robotic stirrups and a pair of silvery articulators descend from the ceiling.

Using the surgical arms, she shoves the chimp onto its back. Its hair already is rimed with ice crystals. Deftly switching through the modes, she arrives at the surgical laser and slides the hot point down its stomach, tearing away the skin. Another two tics on the modes brings her the bone saw.

“Time?” she calls out.

“Twelve seconds,” Kambili says.

She places the bone saw against the chimp’s exposed sternum, but the world lists to one side and clicks into place. At first, Blue thinks her telesurgical system has locked up. It wouldn’t be the first time the station has experienced equipment failure in the middle of an important experiment.

But then she has the nauseating sensation of falling upward, while having her head turned against her will. Her hands clench and in response the bone saw impales the ill-fated primate, sending up a spray of blood and bile. It spatters against the metal deck before freezing in place.

“Wha… thfu—man?” Kambili’s shout is disjointed and stammering.

The world won’t stop spinning. Blue falls to her knees, but the ground beneath her gives her no sense of direction. Gravity still works—all the styluses and pads remain firmly affixed to the lab tables—but the spinning world accelerates.

“Thiiiiiiiiii—nk itsa—” she begins to say, but that’s as much coordination as she can muster. The gaze of one eye drifts toward the ceiling while the other remains in place.

The lab dims out.

*   *   *

Blue comes out of it, and the first thing she detects is the scent of shit. Her lungs don’t want to draw air. She goes to grasp the helmet, but her fingers don’t want to collaborate. Another jolt sends her forward in the bed, and she retches up bile.

She gasps, drinking in the cold air like pure water on a hot day. Her hoarse, whimpering voice startles her. Trying again to wrap her saliva-slicked fingers around her helmet, this time she pulls it off. It moves with a sucking pop. She can’t hold up the six-pound assembly of wires and electrodes, so she hugs it to her so it won’t fall onto the floor.

Blue is back in her room, shaking uncontrollably, the brain-direct interface gear resting atop her in a mound of sick. Exhausted, she wipes her mouth with her free hand and lies back in the hospital bed. It’s dark, but for a small night-light in the corner. She keeps it that way when she rides inside Marcus, so her real eyes won’t try to see.

She hears the banging of distant boots, and it draws nearer, heavy and fast.

“Marcus,” she says, but it only comes out in a moaning whisper.

The android rounds the corner in a flash, taking the BDI gear away from her and snatching up a towel to clean her face and neck. He wipes her down, and then places the helmet at her bedside. The rest of her remains spattered with vomit.

“I’m okay,” she croaks, but he peers over her, making absolutely sure.

“I’m going to turn on the lights, Blue,” he says in a gentle voice. “Are you ready?”

She shuts her eyes and nods. Red light filters in through her eyelids. A warm hand comes to rest on her forehead.

“I’m afraid we have quite a mess,” Marcus says. “Can you open your eyes for me?” She does, even though the bright ceiling lights are like glass shards in her brain. Marcus leans across her bed, gazing into her eyes, not remotely concerned about the sticky mess of bodily fluids touching his clothes.

He’s beautiful, but not attractive—clear green eyes like emeralds, high cheekbones descending into a stern jawline. Above his perpetually sympathetic brow, wavy blond hair catches the light. She expects to feel his breath on her face as he draws closer, even though she knows he doesn’t respire.

“Pupillary response is normal,” he says, pressing two fingers into her neck. “Pulse one-twelve.”

“Water?” She smacks her lips.

He fills a cup and passes it to her. “It seems we’ve gotten our exercise today.”

She swishes the bitterness from her mouth and swallows, some of the liquid dribbling down the sides of her chin. It doesn’t matter. Marcus will have to give her a sponge bath, anyway.

“What happened?”

“Wireless connection loss, possibly from a solar flare,” he says. “You were only synchronizing with two of my systems at a time, and that threw our balance by a considerable—”

She shakes her head. “With sample sixty-three… Did Kambili…”

“I’m sorry to say that it was a failure,” Marcus says. “We lost the sample.”

She shuts her eyes again. “Fuck.”

Marcus picks up the interface headset and begins to clean it. He stops short and gazes at her abdomen.

“You’ve dislodged your pouch,” he says. “You may have done it during a seizure, caused by the disconnection.”

At least her catheter didn’t come out. She remembers a time when she didn’t need colostomy bags. She remembers pizza and beer every Friday. She remembers being an avid jogger at Johns Hopkins. She had a life before her diagnosis—a trajectory that should’ve kept her on Earth.

Blue doesn’t look down to see the results. “Clean it up, please.”

“Right away,” he says, filling a cup with warm water and a few drops of disinfectant. Marcus removes the broken pouch and cleans away the excess. Gently swabbing at the area around her stoma, he makes a pained face.

“What?” she says. He’s programmed to make that face when giving bad news.

“I really think you should consider going full NPO regimen, Blue,” he says. “I’m concerned about laryngeal spasms.”

Nil-per-os. Nothing by mouth. Blue juts out her chin, and she feels something of her own surly grandmother in that gesture. “I’m not giving up my goddamned Jello, Marcus.”

“Then consider…” he says, pausing and pretending to think. Marcus already has identified the next thousand branches of the conversation, but she knows he pauses for dramatic effect. “Consider returning to Earth. You could remain in cold sleep, or if that’s not appealing, Earth has excellent palliative care. I don’t believe it’s healthy for a person to spend their waning hours designing weapons.”

She grunts as he hits a tender spot. Her stoma has changed shape due to the constant bedrest, and the area around the appliance has gone slightly red. He’s right about the NPO, but she won’t allow it. Not as close as she is.

“‘Waning hours?’ God, you sound like one of those old poetry-quoting models. Like a Walter or something. Have you got some William Carlos Williams for me?”

He gives her a bashful look. “That wasn’t my intent.” Gently peeling her hospital gown off her emaciated arms, he sponges her off. She’d been so proud of her body once. She’d shared it with so many people.

“Besides,” she says, “you’re Company property, and I’m a major asset. You should be trying to convince me to stay.”

He clips another bag onto her abdomen and tightens the connection with a kind smile. Then he replaces her gown with a fresh one. “I’m directed to keep you safe, above all else.”

She reaches up and touches his cheek with a quivering hand, its muscles atrophied from her condition. “And what do you do when safety isn’t an option?”

“Then I keep you happy.”

“I’m a scientist,” she says. “I’m the happiest when I’m doing my job.” She taps his forehead. “Up here.” Her hand comes to rest at her side. “Anyway, there’s not a resupply for another six months. How do you expect me to get back?”

“We could freeze you. Await transport. You’d awaken at home as if no time had passed. And you’re wrong about the lack of transport. The Commander has authorized me to inform you that an auditor is docking in three weeks.”

“What?” Blue would’ve sat up if her abdominal muscles weren’t in such pain.

“I apologize,” he says. “I simply wasn’t authorized to share that information before now. I’m concerned about the amount of stress this has placed on you.”

“Why is an auditor flying out?”

“I haven’t been told. I’m sure it’s nothing serious, but they could be concerned about the slow progress here at the Cold Forge. Several projects are behind schedule.”

“My project.”

“And Silversmile,” Marcus says. “I’m sure you’re not the only—”

Blue shakes her head. “Give me my portable terminal, and get out.”

Marcus picks up the terminal, places it in front of her, and takes an unceremonious leave. Blue waits until the door is closed, glaring at the open portal until she’s safe. Then she unfolds the keyboard, balances it on her stomach, and logs into the digital drop. She isn’t supposed to do it too often—it’s dangerous if the station has too many outgoing signals—but something in this auditor’s arrival chills her skin.

They can’t know what Blue has been doing with the egg samples. Weyland-Yutani hired her to find a way to control the strange beasts, to manipulate their DNA in utero. Back on Earth, she had been one of the planet’s leading geneticists. But now, far away in the stars, she has seen the brutal recombinant DNA of the creatures, and feels nothing but hope.

It first became apparent at the moment of impregnation. The fleeting heat of a molecular change within the esophagus of the chimpanzee, not a larva or worm placed into the subject, but a set of complex chemical instructions that went beyond the intricacy of anything humanity had ever seen.

Weyland-Yutani wants the creature, but Blue wants the code. Within it, she’s certain she’ll find the key to her survival. Yet capturing that injection is like a photographer trying to capture the moment a kingfisher enters the water—twinned beaks meeting across its mirrored surface. She could spend a decade with hundreds of eggs, and still meet with no success.

Blue doesn’t have hundreds of eggs. She doesn’t have a decade. The last doctor told her she didn’t even have a year of life left in her. The last of her muscles will deteriorate. She’ll cease to breathe on her own. Her nervous system will be pockmarked with sclerotic tissue. Neuropathy will take her legs.

She shakes the image from her head. Blue doesn’t want to be thinking like this, but the auditor’s presence has forced new pressures into her mind.

The terminal boots up in her hands, and she types in her password. The phrase isn’t as long as she’d like, but her muscle memory simply isn’t what it used to be. She’s never logged into this terminal while inside of Marcus’s body—he would remember. She’s never allowed any cameras to capture the password.

Checking her personal inbox, she finds a message from an old high school friend, with a picture of Blue’s mother, who passed away ten years prior. In it, Blue wraps her arms around her mother and smiles, and bright green trees wave in the background. A field of grain stretches away to their right.

The friend who sent the photo is an independent contractor, taking orders from an intermediary, taking orders from Elise Coto, one of the one hundred-twelve vice presidents of Weyland-Yutani. If Blue is discovered, she’ll be terminated, with no right to passage home. She will be allowed to stow, but will have no access to a cryo pod.

It will kill her.

Blue removes her medical bracelet and snaps open the plate to reveal a micro interface bus connection. She plugs in the bracelet, which functions as a digital one-time pad. This smiling pastoral with her mother is picture A227-B, and hidden inside the picture are pixels that exhibit twenty-seven precise degrees of brightness variance—enough for the alphabet and some spaces. The cipher program maps the eight hundred relevant pixels and translates them.

Blue’s heart catches as she reads the message.

NEEDED RESULTS

CANT PROTECT US ANYMORE

GOOD LUCK

2

ARRIVAL

Electropolarization dims Dorian’s window as he watches their approach to RB-232. The station becomes a silhouetted barbell against a sea of fire. His briefing indicates that, at one side of the barbell, are the crew quarters. At the other extreme lies the Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility, or SCIF. The light of Kaufmann, the system’s star, gives the station a furious halo, and Dorian’s brain quickly draws parallels between the hues of fusing matter and the oils in his easel case.

That halo also provides the perfect camouflage.

Setting aside the classified reports on RB-232, known as “the Cold Forge,” he guzzles another bottle of the salty crap he drinks after every cold sleep. He’s grown accustomed to the taste, because he loves cryo. With every voyage, he becomes more unstuck from his parents, his childhood friends, his days in Boston. This is his twentieth voyage. He’s killing his past a little bit more with each ticket.

He’d like to paint the transiting station, but it’s all so plain—just a shadow on orange. Dorian wonders what it would look like if the heat shield failed, and for a split second the station’s corridors and beams were placed into the ultimate radiance. What would that be like inside the station? He spends his next hour sketching, enjoying the stark contrast of black on white that comes from his conté crayons.

“Docking in fifteen, chief,” Ken Riley, the Athenian’s captain, announces over the loudspeaker in the common area.

Dorian misses his room on Luna. Now that was a view. Here, he has only a cryosleep pod and public washing areas. There’s no one on this ship Dorian considers fuckable, either. He’s the only person who isn’t essential to the transport’s functioning. Riley flies, Susan Spiteri is the copilot, Montrell Lupia operates comms and navigation. They all act as Dorian’s security detail while he executes his audit. He’s never had need of their services to stop an insurgency, but he often visits remote locations to deliver very bad news. In his heart of hearts, he hopes to see Spiteri gun someone down one day.

It’d be entertaining, to say the least.

While the crew struggles to prepare the tiny vessel for docking, Dorian skives off in the lounge, pulls out his easel case, and enjoys a stint with his artwork, working his arms and thawing his bones from the long slumber. Sometimes, he wonders if he should’ve been a painter, but if he’d taken that route, he would have been denied the perk of having his life extended by the constant cold sleep.

According to the reports, there are thirty-two people on board the station, participating in three special projects. Two of them are behind schedule. One of them, “Glitter Edifice,” is running out of funding and supplies. He doesn’t know what “Glitter Edifice” is or what it does, but it looks like boring genetic work. The documents were heavily redacted.

He’s laying the finishing touch on a gesture drawing—the lines of RB-232 pierced by the persistent rays of the sun—when the ship jolts and his grip slips. A hard, scraggly line leers back at him from the surface of the Bristol board. The piece was only a study in shape, but he quite liked it before this imperfection, and a rage swells in his gut. Dorian grits his teeth and scribbles across the surface, decimating the tip of the conté crayon. Then he crumples up the paper and tosses it into the incinerator, along with his now damaged crayon.

It’ll be hard to get to an art store ten parsecs from Earth, but he’ll figure something out. He still has plenty of tubes of oil paint.

“Airlock secured, sir,” Ken says. “We’re latched on.”

“Smooth landing, Captain,” Dorian says.

“Thank you, sir.” The captain has missed the sarcasm, and Dorian regrets not injecting more venom into his tone. He goes to the crew baths and washes his hands, then dries them on a white hand towel, smearing charcoal black into its fibers. Walking to his mirror, he fashions a tie into a complex, multi-layered knot that would make Van Leuwen weep with jealousy. Squaring his shoulders, he regards himself for a long while before re-combing the sides of his hair and slicking them back down with some product. He makes sure the upward curve of his regal cheek flows straight into the lines of his coiffure.

“Sir?” Ken’s voice comes over the intercom again. “They’re, uh, expecting to meet with us soon.”

“They can wait, Captain,” he replies, smoothing a single stray hair back into place. “We’ve been in transit for a year. They’ll live another five minutes without us.”

“Acknowledged.” The most noncommittal response anyone can give on a ship.

Ken, Montrell, and Susan shuffle past the crew baths and into the common area, where they all tell jokes and crack open beers. In spite of Ken’s recent failure, Dorian likes them all. They never ask him questions. They keep him informed. They shuttle him to the places that need auditing, and don’t try to induct him into their “family.” Families are overrated.

As he grooms, he wonders about the last time the crew of RB-232 saw a suit. It had to have been when they left Earth, or at some sort of commissioning party. Their clothes would be five years out of date at a minimum, and Dorian is excited to see what they will make of him. Once he’s fully satisfied with his appearance, he joins his crewmates at the airlock.

They’re all enthusiastic to get out of the Athenian and explore their new—albeit temporary—habitat. He likes that. They’ll report back to him with any strange corporate culture entanglements they find, and he can eliminate those responsible.

Klaxons blare. Yellow dome lights flash around the airlock, and the doors open onto a spacious, though empty, docking bay. The meager inhabitants of RB-232 stand before him in the center of the deck, a thin parody of a military unit. They slouch against crates and sit cross-legged on the floor, then scramble to their feet as he enters. His eyes divide them into groups of threes, then he counts the groups: eighteen people. That means four have abstained from attending his boarding. He’ll take special care to memorize the faces and names of those who are present.

A set of dim blue blinking LEDs runs along the floor in a train, emerging from his ship’s docking clamp and away down the central strut—some kind of wayfinding system, perhaps? Dorian looks left to see if he can spy where they’re going, but he can’t see the end of the long hallway, so returns his attention to the gathered crew.

At the center of the group are a man and a woman, standing stiff as boards. They’re veterans, and he knows what they will say before they speak.

“Welcome to the Cold Forge. I’m Commander Daniel Cardozo, and this is Anne Wexler, my chief of security.”

Ex-military always speak first. They love to posture like they’re the heart of the operation, but on a day-to-day basis, in the middle of deep space, they’re worthless. RB-232 is shrouded in so many cover stories that it’s the dark secret of a dark secret. No one will be attacking them. They probably make viruses here, and with a virus there’s nothing to shoot.

Cardozo is older, saltier than anyone else there, with skin like tanned leather. Likely he’s seen armed conflict, and is enjoying what amounts to retirement. Anne is Dorian’s age, smooth and lithe. She might be bored. Dorian hopes she is. Bored people are apt to do stupid things.

“Commander. Anne.” Dorian shakes both of their hands in turn.

“Director,” Anne begins. “My records may be out of date… Have you received all of the required safety training? Hazmat certs? Materials safety? Escape vehicle orientation and codes?”

I have my own goddamned spaceship, woman. Nothing annoys Dorian more than all of the pointless presentations he has to endure at each new installation. Hours and hours of time thrown away, just so he can memorize some codes he’ll never use. “Absolutely,” he says. “I’m not sure why the records didn’t come across.”

Anne nods, but doesn’t press the issue. She knows he’s too important for such garbage.

“You’re familiar with the purpose of this station?” Cardozo asks.

“I’ve only read a few of the reports. Carter Burke wanted to start a special project, but the Governance Board weren’t confident in his ability to see it all the way through. Something about it being too much for a junior executive.” He’d read between the lines. “This, then, is a backup to his project?”

“Yes,” Daniel says. “I’ve heard he’s pretty far along. Do you know if he’s gotten any results?”

“No clue,” Dorian says. “Different department.”

Cardozo gestures toward three personnel, two men and a woman. “These are our project leads, Blue Marsalis, Josep Janos, and Lucy Biltmore.”

Judging from his appearance, Janos works out, and Dorian takes his hand first, shaking firmly, puffing out his chest a bit without making it too obvious. The man has a broom of a mustache, and his clothes are clearly well loved, fraying in places. This will be Dorian’s morning workout partner. Perhaps Anne can join them.

Biltmore comes next, shy and uninteresting. Lucy has the sort of homegrown look that Dorian can’t stand, and he inwardly hopes she’ll need to be shuffled off the station. She looks like a child jammed into an adult-sized flight suit. He gives her a hearty greeting and moves on as soon as is socially acceptable.

When he reaches Marsalis, he stops dead. Wavy blond hair, artificially attractive features. He knows a synthetic when he sees one.

“Aren’t you a Marcus?” he asks.

The Marcus’s mouth twitches with a socially required smile. This question has produced a fascinating irritation in the synthetic, which Dorian has never experienced. He reminds himself to keep up his friendly, almost boisterous manner with a hearty handshake.

“I get that a lot,” Marsalis says, thin-lipped, taking back his hand. “I’m a human, piloting a synthetic. My real body is in my quarters.”

“That’s incredible.” Dorian circles the Marcus, looking him up and down with a grin, while the android remains unmoving. “Well, Blue, I’m Director Sudler.”

“Nice to meet you, Mister Sudler.”

So Blue Marsalis will be the piece that doesn’t fit into Dorian’s machine. “Please, call me Director, at least until we know each other a little better.” He quirks his lips.

Marsalis chuckles and looks at Cardozo with a sarcasm Dorian has never seen on a synthetic face.

“I didn’t know ‘Director’ was an honorific on Earth nowadays,” Marsalis says, crossing his arms. “You know… Mister, Missus, Mix, Doctor… Director.”

Dorian glances about, taking in the reactions of the crew. They’re afraid of an auditor, but they’re enjoying Marsalis’s commentary. Maybe he can make her appear rude. He shakes his head, frowning.

“I’m surprised that bothers you, Mister Marsalis. Or is it Miss Marsalis? Or should I call you Blue?”

“I’m sorry,” Marsalis says, offering his hand once more. “You can call me Doctor Marsalis… at least until we know each other a little better.”

Dorian laughs to cover his annoyance. Marsalis’s denigration and blatant disregard for the authority of an auditor is like a needle pressing against soft tissue under his fingernail. If he fires Blue, however, it’ll have to be for more than simple revenge, or he’ll appear weak.

But he will fire Blue.

“I’m sure you’d like to see your quarters, Director Sudler,” Cardozo says. “Perhaps you could get settled in and then—”

“Nonsense, Daniel,” Dorian says. “Let’s dig in. I’ve been sleeping too long already. Show me your projects.”

“Then allow me to show you our operation,” Cardozo says, then he speaks to no one in particular. “Navigation, take us to the central SCIF.” A short chime fills the corridor. The lights along the floor change direction, running away in a blue stream. Dorian cranes his neck to follow their new pathway.

“That’ll help you get around while you’re down here, especially in the SCIF,” Cardozo says. “You wouldn’t believe how twisty it can be. Some of these modules were designed for prisoners.”

“Cute,” Dorian says. “And do you have any prisoners?”

Cardozo gives him a wry smile. “Yes, we do. Let’s go say hello, then.”

*   *   *

It strikes Dorian as overkill. The idea of a sensitive, compartmented information facility on a secret space station ten parsecs from Earth. What can they have to hide that isn’t already shrouded by the radiation of Kaufmann?

The central strut of the station stretches at least a half of a mile, with sockets for additional prefab modules along the way. It has a pleasing repetition to it, and looking out the windows to his left, Dorian can see the heat shield protecting them from the rays of the dwarf star below. The plates are articulated—was the station designed to be moved? RB-232 was clearly created to be expanded, and yet it sits mostly empty, save for the two ends. It’s a waste. The station should be bustling with employees and additional crew quarter modules.

Yet that’s not his focus. Auditors get little benefit from identifying lost opportunities. Those could be costly, and his job is to cut expenses.

“Why do you call it the Cold Forge?” Dorian asks, walking alongside the three project managers and a few of their personnel. Ken, Susan, and Montrell accompany them.

“Because this entire station is dedicated to the manufacture of adaptive weapons, biological, artificial intelligence and software,” Anne replies, her matter-of-fact voice carrying through the cavernous central strut. “Kind of like the forges of old, where they used to make swords. Except we don’t make ships, missiles, or pulse rifles here. We win wars.”

“I see.” Dorian gives her a boyish grin, presenting himself to her as charmed because he doubts she has ever charmed anyone.

“You can see from our superstructure that we have the SCIF on one side and crew quarters on the other,” Anne says. “The SCIF is vibration-isolated with full air gaps to all of the networks. No data in, no data out without clearing our official channels. That means we can fully lock it down during resupply missions.”

They pass a glass door, and Dorian peers inside to see the blinking lights of server racks. In the center of the round chamber, a console awaits, its screen dim.

“That’s Titus,” Cardozo says. “He’ll be assisting you during your audit with your classified, non-project data. Have you read the classification guides for RB-232?”

“Yes, Commander,” Dorian says, and the man preens slightly. It’s been a while since someone called him by rank alone. “But I’ll need to run numbers on all three projects here, and I’ll want some specifics.”

“I’m not sure you’ll be able to see all of my project,” Marsalis says, his (her?) eyes cast absentmindedly to the ceiling as though counting crossbars. “I’m sure you’ll understand. There are several dimensions that aren’t available to the operating unit heads, so a regular director—”

Dorian stops and narrows his eyes. “I think you’ll find that I’m not a ‘regular’ director, Doctor Marsalis. I’m here on the full faith and credit of the senior vice president, and while on site I’m cleared at all levels of classification, with all code words.” He looks down his nose. “But while we’re on the subject, how… exactly… do you enter the SCIF to work on your project?”

“I don’t follow,” Marsalis says.

He strides up to the doctor, his long bird legs closing the distance in just two steps, and then waves his hand over the synthetic’s head, and the doctor recoils.

“There are no strings on this puppet,” Dorian says. “You’re a walking, wireless transmitter.” He turns to Anne and grins as though they’re sharing a joke, though deep down, Dorian doesn’t find it amusing. He already sees the biggest budgetary abuse on RB-232. “So why did we build a multi-billion-dollar SCIF if we’re going to put a radio inside of it?”

“My comms are secured,” Marsalis says, “and I was given special dispensation by Elise Coto.”

“Coto is our VP of Genetic Interests, and she insisted Blue have an assignment here, in spite of her… difficulties,” Anne adds with a small defensive note. “Doctor Marsalis is a leading researcher in her field.”

Dorian’s ears prick up. Behind the perfect synth face of a man, Blue is a woman. A thrill tugs at his heart. He’s never met anyone like this doctor. Cardozo is an old jarhead. Anne is a wannabe jarhead. Lucy is a joke. Janos is a geek… but Blue Marsalis is someone new. What does it do to a person to live through a synthetic? When she imagines a mirror, does she imagine Marcus, or her own face? Is she gnarled by illness? He wants to needle her more to see what color blood comes out.

“Then I guess we’ll get to see something amazing, since we’ve made a special exception for you,” Dorian says.

“Yes, you will,” Cardozo says. “But your crew will have to learn to love the quarters. I didn’t get authorization for them, so they’ll be staying put.” He looks meaningfully at the trio from the Athenian. “This stuff is all ‘need-to-know.’”

Dorian nods to Ken, who gleefully retreats. The rest follow. Ken doesn’t care for this business crap, anyway, and he doesn’t even bother to hide it. Dorian has never considered what they do with their copious free time—they can stare at the wall for all he cares. He only ever needs them when he has to be transported, or wants corporate reinforcement.

The crew of the Athenian disappears into the bowels of the station, and Cardozo gestures for some of his own crew to follow, instructing them to show the visitors around.

At the end of the central axis they pass into chain-link caged walls, and the passageway begins a steady incline, ending with a bulkhead door secured with multifactor security: biometric, code, and key. Yellow caution stripes surround the doorframe, and a set of surveillance cameras records them from every possible angle. When Dorian looks back at the corridor beyond the chain-link, he finds glittering black USCM autoturrets trained on his position.

“What are those for?” he asks, nodding to the guns. “Intruders on the station?”

“We call this area the ‘killbox,’” Anne says. “Two hundred feet of constricted corridor with radio-transparent chain walls. There’s an emergency seal behind us. Anything tries to get out of here, we open fire with caseless ten-twenty-fours.”

“‘Get out of here?’” Dorian repeats. “So what, are we going to wear IFF tags?”

“No,” Blue says. “Those guns are designed not to care if you’re friend or foe. If you’re in the killbox and they come on, you’re dead. We can’t risk anyone bringing something out of the labs.”

Cardozo turns around, hands clasped behind his back. “Director Sudler, everything you’re about to see remains classified under TS/SCI Mountain protocols. You will not be exporting reports from this station without clearing them through myself and Anne as export control. You will not speak of this to anyone else, including those who possess Weyland-Yutani TS/SCI clearances. The penalty for such an action would be breach of paragraph six, subsection B of your employment contract, and would subject you and your estate to both civil and criminal action. Do I make myself clear?”

“That’s the same deal I face on every station, Commander,” Dorian says. “I think I can handle it.”

Daniel gives him a wide grin. “Going to be tougher when you see what we’ve got inside. Let’s open her up, Wexler.”

Anne and Daniel enter codes, scan hand and face geometry, and insert a pair of keys, turning them at the same time. With a hiss, the SCIF door slides into its pocket. Daniel beckons them in, and as they step over the threshold, Dorian sees that the bulkhead is nearly a half-yard thick. There can be no breaking it, no ramming it.

The SCIF common area stretches before them, an open structure three stories tall with a glass-enclosed control room at the top. Anne ushers Dorian inside, and the rest of the Cold Forge crew follows.

“The SCIF is one hundred thirty thousand square feet of specialized laboratories, servers, and workstations. It’s designed for scientists to work in concert, and all our personnel float between projects. Don’t let its compact size fool you—there are a half-mile of corridors connecting a hundred tiny rooms in here.”

“Impressive,” Dorian says. “Looks like your security folks have your work cut out for you. What’s that up there?” He points to the glass control room.

“That’s our interface to the AI mainframe, Juno,” Daniel says. “She’ll be assisting you from inside the SCIF. Any SCI queries that you have go through her. Remember, Titus is for ‘total station control.’ Juno is for ‘just the classified stuff.’”

Dorian gives him a crass smirk. “You can’t be serious.”

Cardozo shrugs. “Stupid enough to remember the difference, right?”

They first take him to “Rose Eagle”—some kind of reactor and focusing array, spearheaded by Josep Janos. They explain that it’s a way of disrupting entangled communications networks and injecting information into them. At that, Dorian spaces out. Janos has a way of speaking that makes his technical explanations unbearable, ending every sentence as though it is a question. Every time his voice rises, so do Dorian’s hackles.

But Dorian already knows that Rose Eagle doesn’t matter. It’s on schedule, to be delivered to a bunker in West Virginia during the next crew rotation. Janos is returning home when that occurs, to take R&R for a year and hike the Appalachian Trail. He has no vulnerabilities to exploit, and so Dorian loses all interest. There’s nothing more boring than a project running according to plan.

Next is “Silversmile,” a neural network virus which began its life as two words. Unlike Rose Eagle and Glitter Edifice, its randomly selected pair of words sounds ominous, like a brand name. Using the printers, Lucy Biltmore has made herself a mission patch and logo which she shares with her laboratory assistants. She’s used her custom wordmark throughout the operating system.

There’s an irony in the nomenclature of the digraph—Weyland-Yutani’s classification authority selects monikers designed to discourage mental associations, but Lucy has embraced them. If she deployed weaponized code at this moment, adversaries would have little trouble tracing the project back to RB-232. Dorian watches the skinny woman with her cartoonishly large eyes and mouth, her messy pixie cut, and he looks forward to reprimanding her for this blatant oversight.

Anticipating Dorian’s arrival, Lucy has prepared a show and tell with large, attractive readouts and graphs. There are many bullet points. She produced a video with motion graphics depicting the effects of Silversmile on a computer network. The method is simple. Silversmile uses whatever comms it can find to infect other machines, then it lashes together a distributed processing system. The more computers it can infect, the smarter it becomes. Once it feels confident, it intuits the most critical infrastructure and attacks it first. Perhaps a dam turbine, perhaps a life support system.

“But we’re writing it to be restricted to a single location, because, you know…” Lucy trails off as ANY QUESTIONS? appears on the screen behind her.

“Enlighten me,” Dorian says, and Lucy squirms under his gaze. She’s afraid of losing funding.

“It’d be like the apocalypse.” She laughs nervously. “It’d just spread until it hit a system smarter than it was.”

Dorian folds his hands behind his back. “And… at this point in your project, aren’t most systems smarter than it is? What’s the reason for all the delays?”

“Computer science is the process of solving unsolved problems.” She holds her hands close to her chest, pulling on her fingers as if she’s wringing a washcloth. “So, you know, I don’t think it’s easy to put an exact delivery date on—” He watches her waffle. Her answers are vague and insipid, and project managers have delivered code for centuries now. Even her growing panic is uninteresting—it’s like playing a game without an opponent.

“Are you from the same Biltmores as the North Carolina Biltmores?” he asks, interrupting a string of vocalized pauses. “Like, the big estate there?”

She smiles, overly toothy beneath her swollen lips.

“I… don’t know.”

Dorian shrugs. “Okay. Just curious.”

He turns. “Next project.”

3

THE KENNELS

They file through hallways and away from the common area. The safety lighting here is uncomfortably bright, and the floor and walls have been treated with some sort of polymer coating. They reach a bend in the corridor, and a tremendous vault door sprawls before them, covered over in various biohazard warnings.

It takes all of Dorian’s composure not to roll his eyes. A genetic weapon is easy to control in space. A virus won’t propagate through airless chambers. In the worst-case scenario, everyone on the research facility dies, but the virus is contained. Yet they’ve locked off Glitter Edifice even from the rest of the SCIF.

Again, multiple keys and multiple codes come out. Blue assists this time, with her own codes and biometrics. A loud klaxon sounds, and a computerized voice fills the intercoms.

“Kennels open. Logged access, Doctor Blue Marsalis.”

“Juno keeps an extra special eye on this place,” Anne says.

Blazing chartreuse covers the hallways beyond, and where most of the station contains exposed pipes and ductwork, Glitter Edifice has only bare walls with black text signs to direct them. Dorian cocks his head.

“Wouldn’t have been my first choice of color.”

“Safety measure,” Blue says. “Human optical response is strongest between bright yellow-green and black… though we also could’ve used a light cyan.”

“Everything looks purple after you get out of here, though,” Josep adds. “Cone strain on your eyes because your green receptors are overworked.” The second statement is enough of an explanation that it rises at the end.

“I’ll… keep that in mind,” Dorian says. “And why do we care about green-black contrast?”

“Survival,” Blue says, ushering them in.

The place feels like a bunker. It reminds Dorian of the subfloors of Weyland-Yutani’s Tokyo office—impenetrable concrete vaults of records and archived hard drives stored in suspension fluid. It would be easier to rob a bank than to get into the kennels. Here, the corridors are claustrophobic, not the soaring halls of the rest of the Cold Forge, and the lights are even brighter, giving the whole place the feeling of a bad computer rendering.

They pass a wide, tempered-glass window with a break mesh on both sides. Dorian leans in for a closer look and sees a dissection table. Along the back wall, he spots specimen jars the size of human torsos, and distorted, bony hands floating inside—tails where their wrist bones should be, scrotum-like diaphragms at the joining. Inside the room, a young black man in a lab coat looks into a microscope.

Dorian stares at the claws in wide-eyed fascination.

“This way,” Blue calls out. The party has already moved beyond him. Lucy’s eyes are even wider here, her large lips pursed and white. She’s genuinely afraid of this place.

“Is that some kind of trophy room?” Dorian asks her, whispering.

“More like hell,” she replies. “Don’t eat any pomegranate seeds while you’re down here.”

“More of a rare steak man, myself.”

“You’ll get along just fine then,” she says. They round a corner to a tall room, at least the height of the SCIF common area, with a power loader against the far wall. A darkened set of glass panels punctuates one of the walls, and at first, Dorian believes they’re black, or perhaps smoked glass. He notices loading clamps at the base of each panel, making them look as though they’re stacked like blocks. The panels are each ten feet by ten feet, large enough to fit a truck or docking vessel. As he steps closer, he realizes that the glass panels are clear, and the other side is pitch black.

Blue points to the array of industrial lights high above them. “Special lensing. Sheds light on the cell block, but not the cells. Keeps the disturbances to a minimum.”

“Disturbances?”

“They like the dark.” She pulls a tablet terminal from the wall and types something into the control keys. Everyone steps away from the windows, backing up to the observation area on the other side of the chamber. “I think you’ll be more comfortable over here, Director Sudler.”

“Why?”

“The effect can be unsettling.” She shrugs. “Don’t touch anything.”

He shakes his head and steps closer to the windows. “Show me what you’re going to show me.”

The tap of a key echoes through the chamber, then comes the steaming hiss and the rending of metal. Something is screeching. Dorian flinches, but doesn’t move away. He watches the lights flicker on behind the windows, one by one, illuminating the cells in stunning green. He steps closer to the cell nearest him as the last light flickers on.

The creature before him seems to drip from the ceiling before rising slowly to its feet, hateful lips pulled into a sneer around glassy teeth. Its head is a long, smooth shaft of gray like tumbled granite against the oily black of its body. Chitinous protrusions form a brilliant exoskeleton, rippling with muscular potential. Its tail is an array of ever-shrinking bones, tipped by a wicked barb. It is the intent of every murderer, poured into a mold and painted pitch black. It is a symphony of death, a masterpiece of hellish design, raw will.

Blue was right, the effect is unsettling, and he barely notices the yelp that escapes his lips before utter captivation sets in. Dorian walks along the edge of the cell, and the creature stalks along with him, following his movements without eyes. Its posture is sunken, powerful legs bent like coiled springs. Tendrils of sticky drool ooze from its mouth. His heart rises in his chest, and he wants to weep for the beauty of it. Blue is a genius of the highest order.

“Did you… make these?” he asks, his voice almost a whisper.

“No,” Blue says, to his relief. “I’m not even authorized to know the origin of the eggs.”

“What are they called?”

“I have my own names, but nothing I’ve submitted, since they’re highly classified. One of the Company sourcing guys called them ‘Xenomorphs,’ but that’s kind of a misnomer. Any creature for which we don’t know the taxonomy is technically a xenomorph,” Blue says. “We’ve been calling them snatchers, honestly, because they’re so goddamned fast.”

“And what do we want with them?” Dorian asks, but he’s beyond questioning their presence. “Why research them?”

“They have a broad-based, general application,” Daniel says. “With appropriate control loops, you’re talking about quashing insurgencies, destroying structures, bringing down entire countries. They’re the most potent biological weapon of our age, and if they could be turned to our advantage… Do you even remember the last time the United States Colonial Marines purchased a complete threat response system?”

Dorian rests a hand on the glass as though to touch the creature’s muzzle and it snaps at him like the arc of an electrical current, leaving a smear of ichor across the glass. A klaxon sounds, and a luminous outline of red appears around the back wall of the featureless cell. The screaming from the other cells stops dead. The creature lashes out again, then scrambles into the corner and cowers, wrapping its tail around its legs.