The tittering obscenity and the reptilian humanoid slammed together with a shuddering impact that sent both creatures reeling. Howls and thrashes accompanied their charge.
The Predator lashed out, striking a backhanded blow against the Alien’s gnashing jaw. The Alien staggered. Then, in a scorpionlike motion, the black monster attacked with a flash of its spiked tail. Springing back, the Predator used its wrist blades to counter the strike—and in a quick twist, it severed the Alien’s tail.
Yowling, the Alien whirled, spraying deadly venom from its bloody stump. Whatever the steaming droplets touched burned, sizzled and pitted.
The Predator pulled back its arm to thrust again but discovered that its wrist blades had been reduced to smoldering, molten stubs by the Alien’s acidic blood. Snarling, the Predator leaped at the Alien and brought it down. As they grappled, sparks—struck from solid stone or from the Predator’s shredded armor—created distorted shadows that writhed on the walls, floor and ceiling.
“We have to move!” Lex cried, tugging Sebastian’s coat.
He nodded and stumbled to his knees, grabbing a flashlight that had rolled to his side. Sebastian looked up to see Lex haul Weyland to his feet. The man sobbed and held his useless hands palms up, their fingers encased in congealing black blood.
Sebastian grabbed Weyland’s arm, and together they carried him toward the far end of the corridor, into the darkness. Behind them, the two unearthly creatures grappled on the stained flagstones as the savage battle raged on.
Bodies intertwined as one, the thrashing creatures rolled end over end, kicking and clawing, their wails of rage and pain echoing throughout the tunnel. Gaining the upper hand, the Alien hovered over the humanoid, and its black maw opened. A second set of jaws burst forth from the first—stopping mere inches from the Predator’s battle-damaged face mask.
With an echoing roar, the Predator heaved the black, yammering creature aside and sprang to its feet. Whirling to face the Alien, the warrior raised his wrist and aimed the net gun—
The Alien, its gangly black arms flung wide, launched itself into the air in a powerful bounding leap—
And the Predator fired—
A metal net enveloped the creature in midleap, forcing the kicking, mewing Alien to the floor. The Alien’s exoskeleton clattered on the flagstones as the net pulled tight, crushing it.
The Predator, unsteady and bleeding from its wounds, grunted with satisfaction as the mesh closed on its enemy, piercing through the Alien’s chitinous hide.
Blood and gore spurt from a hundred places, spraying the flagstones and the walls and burning holes wherever it splashed. Unfortunately for the Predator, the acid also burned the net, and in a few brief seconds the mesh melted enough for the Alien to break free.
Spitting angrily, the Alien clambered to its feet and faced the battered Predator. Its black, misshapen body smoked and sizzled where the razor net had cut it. The Alien was determined not to be dominated. Its segmented tail-stump flailed from side to side, beating the stone walls.
The humanoid was clearly overmatched, for the Alien was far more powerful and formidable than the Predator had thought possible. Now there was little to do but face death with honor—and die fighting.
The Predator threw back its arms, extended its chest, and roared in the face of doom.
With a final spitting hiss, the Alien was on him, driving the humanoid to the ground and crushing him under its weight. The Predator struggled against the onslaught, but there was no defense. Clawed hands grasped the Predator’s dreadlocks, holding its head fast.
Then the Alien’s inner mouth punched through the broken faceplate to smash the Predator’s flesh and bony skull beneath. A fountain of gore erupted from the shattered head, spraying the walls and flagstones with clotting brain matter and a steaming green fluid that glowed with a sickly radiance.
Abruptly, Lex and Sebastian—with Weyland draped limply between them—staggered out of the labyrinth and into a vast chamber lined with stout, rough-hewn stone pillars. The room was a maze of pitch-black shadows, but a dim illumination radiated from an unseen source, though it was still difficult to penetrate the darkness for more than a few yards.
Lex was starting to think like the survivors she’d lived amongst—the Sherpas of the Himalayas and the subsistence hunters of Alaska. She knew that anything could be hiding in this forest of carved stone cenotaphs. For the first time in her life, she wished she had a weapon.
They found a wide stone staircase lined with ornate square pillars. After climbing several steps, Lex and Sebastian slowed and released Weyland. He leaned against the wall, avoiding their eyes.
“What was that thing?” Sebastian croaked, rubbing his bruised throat.
“I don’t know, and I don’t want to know.”
Lex drew a compass from her utility belt and, with the sleeve of her coat, wiped the Day-Glo green blood from her face. She read the compass, then glanced around the column-lined stairway.
“What now?” Sebastian asked.
“We keep moving and stay on this heading.”
Weyland clutched his chest and moaned. A cough wracked his frail body. He dropped to his knees and began to hyperventilate. Lex hurried to the man’s side.
“Take it easy,” she said, grabbing his shoulder.
Weyland’s face began to turn blue. His mouth gaped like a suffocating fish.
Without breaking eye contact, Lex took Weyland’s head in her hands and held it. It was clear that he had taken too much air into his lungs and that they were beginning to freeze.
“You have to control your breathing,” she coaxed. “Take slow, steady breaths …”
She took shallow breaths herself, to teach Weyland by example, and soon his own breath became less forced, less labored.
“Slow, steady… that’s it,” Lex said as the tension drained from Weyland’s face and he visibly relaxed. Finally, Lex led Weyland to a step and sat him down.
“I’m okay… I’m okay,” Weyland croaked, trying to wave her away and rise again.
Suddenly a looming shadow appeared at the bottom of the stairs.
“Come on, we have to get out of here,” Lex cried, hauling Weyland to his feet. Hobbled, the billionaire tried to use an ice axe as a cane, but his arms were as tired as his legs—too exhausted to support him now. Slowly, Weyland slumped against the wall, teetering on unsteady limbs.
“No,” he gasped. “I can’t… it’s hard enough to stand…”
Every word Weyland spoke seemed to sap more of his waning strength. Lex could see that the strain of the chase and the constant exposure to the frigid air had ravaged what little remained of the man’s disease-ridden lungs.
“Weyland—”
But the man cut her off.
“Save it,” he said with some of his old authority. “This is all my fault.”
His intentions were clear. Weyland was going to sacrifice himself in order to give her and Sebastian more of a head start.
“I’m not letting you die down here,” said Lex.
Weyland grinned. “You didn’t, Lex. Go. I’ll buy you whatever time I can.”
The Predator was coming, moving very deliberately up the stairs. Weyland spied it and grabbed the ice axe, brandishing it like a weapon.
“Go! Go now,” he cried.
Lex reached for Weyland, but Sebastian grabbed her arm and dragged her up the stairs. Weyland and Lex shared a final look, then the man turned to face the presence growing nearer.
Not bothering to cloak itself, the Predator walked right up to Weyland. The human rose to his full height, staring impassively at the otherworldly creature. For a long moment, Weyland faced the Predator squarely, eye to eye, then lifted the axe and charged.
The Predator reached out, snatched the axe out of Weyland’s hand and tossed it aside as Weyland’s futile swing carried him past the Predator and set him stumbling down a step into an elaborately etched wall panel.
The creature turned and stared down at Weyland. As blank eyes on the Predator’s faceplate glowed with crimson fire, the human felt a strange warmth inside his chest. Reaching out, the Predator clutched Weyland’s shoulders, held him fast and examined him from head to toe.
Then, snorting contemptuously, the creature pushed Weyland aside and turned his back on him.
Weyland understood what that meant. Somehow the Predator could sense his frailty and did not regard him as a threat—in fact, Weyland was sure that, to this monster, he was nothing more than a sick, helpless animal!
Choking on a rush of helpless rage, Weyland clenched his teeth and searched for a way to strike back. He had no weapon, but his fingers closed on the oxygen tank slung over his back.
Ripping the cylinder off his shoulder, Weyland set the tank down and propped it against his foot. Kneeling, he opened the valve until it was gushing full blast. As pure oxygen filled the chamber, he yanked an emergency flare from his utility belt and held it up.
“Don’t you turn your back on me!” he cried.
At the sound of the human’s voice, the Predator spun—and Weyland ignited the flare.
The combustible oxygen instantly exploded in a bright yellow fireball that engulfed the Predator. Clutching the tank and directing the oxygen flow, Weyland doused the thrashing, flailing creature with blistering fire.
When Weyland heard the Predator’s pain-wracked cries echoing off the walls, he laughed like a madman. “That’s right, you son of a bitch! Burn…”
The black silhouette in the center of the conflagration screeched again. Then, still wreathed in flames, the Predator lurched forward as it unsheathed twin wrist blades. With one quick thrust the Predator plunged the long, wicked knives into Charles Weyland’s soft, unprotected belly.
Weyland died with scarcely a sigh, blood starting from his nose and mouth. Snarling, the Predator hauled the limp, bloodstained body into the inferno to be consumed. But with Weyland’s corpse came the oxygen tank, still clutched in his dead hands. Licked by the flames, the pressurized contents of the cylinder detonated like a bomb. A billowing orange blast and a bright yellow fireball surged along the stairway, scorching everything in its fiery path.
Lex and Sebastian stumbled blindly through the semidarkness, once again lost in the maze of stone corridors. The pyramid rumbled as it shifted shape yet again, shaking the dust of millennia loose to choke and blind them. Over the noise and the pounding of their boots on the stone floor, they heard Weyland’s cries, then the explosion.
“Weyland!”
“You can’t help him,” Sebastian said, dragging her along.
Lex struggled against him.
“Lex, we have to go… hurry!”
From behind came a blast of hot air—and something else. They both saw a flickering light at the far end of the corridor. Then a fiery figure hurled out of the darkness toward them—the Predator, its form sheathed in roaring flames that did not seem to harm the creature in the least.
Sebastian grabbed her arm and they both ran. They hadn’t gotten more than a few yards before Lex heard the sound of massive feet pounding through the darkness, gaining on them.
Sebastian rounded a corner and spied a stone barrier rising up from the floor directly in front of them. If it closed before they got through it, they would be trapped in the corridor with the Predator.
By the time they reached the threshold, the barrier was halfway up. Sebastian lifted Lex and practically threw her over the stone wall. Then he leaped up and caught the edge, hauling himself across the top of the door and down the other side.
Just as the opening was about to seal, one of the Predator’s throwing disks sailed through and ricocheted off the far wall in a shower of sparks.
On the opposite side of the door, the Predator turned away from the stone barrier to see a black monstrosity uncoiling from a pillar, its segmented black exoskeleton blending in perfect camouflage with the architecture.
Rearing up, the Alien prepared to strike.
But the Predator was faster. Its throwing disk streaked through the air and bit deep into the Alien’s shoulder, severing its arm. Then the metallic disk arced gracefully around and vanished into the shadows.
The Alien flailed its ravaged limb, spraying acid blood on the surrounding pillars.
The Predator slammed into the Alien, its booted foot snapping its foe’s bony chest plates. The monster howled as it was hurled to the floor, the Predator weighing it down. They battled, hand to hand, as the Alien’s lifeblood gushed from its hemorrhaging stump.
Finally, the Predator pinned the squirming Alien to the stone floor with one clawed hand. A throwing disk whizzed over their heads, and the Predator lifted its free hand to snatch it out of the air.
With one quick, violent motion he brought the disk down on the Alien, severing its tittering head from its thrashing body. Bubbling acid gushed from the wound, sizzling on the cold flagstones beneath it. The dead Alien twitched once, then stilled.
Sebastian and Lex raced through another doorway and discovered a new chamber.
The cavernous room was lined with millions of hieroglyphic characters and dozens of elaborately painted panels covered in pictographs and artistic representations depicting, Sebastian assumed, events of historical significance to the long-lost civilization that had built this pyramid.
Sebastian approached a thick stone wall etched with a swirling, abstract design. A dozen or more small peepholes had been cut into the wall—each affording a glimpse into the chamber of pillars from which they had just barely escaped. Sebastian peered through one of the holes.
“Look!” he whispered.
Lex joined Sebastian and glanced through the opening.
From high above they could observe the grisly brutality of the scene. The Predator loomed over the bloody carcass of the Alien it had just decapitated. As the humans watched, the hunter threw back its arms and looked heavenward, as if in prayer. Drawing a knife from a hidden sheath strapped to its waist, the Predator sliced off one of the fingers from the Alien’s double-thumbed hand.
Next the Predator reached up and fumbled with the pressure valves at the base of its mask. With a hiss of escaping gasses, the vacuum seal was broken. A moment later the creature lowered its faceplate to reveal two feral eyes, a noseless face covered with pasty-gray flesh, and crablike mandibles that flexed and clawed at the stagnant air.
Clutching the faceplate in one hand, the Predator used the severed finger as a writing implement, etching a design into the faceplate’s hard, cold metal with the Alien’s acid blood. A sizzling hiss could be heard as he carved a stylized thunderbolt design onto the mask’s smooth forehead.
“What is he doing?” Lex whispered.
The Predator held up the mask, displaying it in the feeble light. Grunting in satisfaction, it flipped the mask over to reveal a mirrored surface lining the interior of the eye slits. Using that reflective surface, the Predator lifted the bloody finger and branded the same pattern on its own forehead. The acid smoked and sizzled, and the Predator roared with pain. But the alien hunter did not stop until the thunderbolt design was complete.
“He’s blooding himself,” Sebastian replied after a long silence. “Tribal warriors of ancient cultures do it. Mark themselves with the blood of their kill. It’s like a rite of passage—a sign that they’ve become a man.” Then he grinned. “This is all starting to make sense.”
He turned away from the peephole and scanned the hieroglyphs around him, tracing the patterns with his eyes and caressing the carvings with his fingers.
“Yes!” he cried, eyes bright with the rapture of discovery. “This is starting to make sense….”