“I want to show you something.” Sebastian led Lex to a panel between two stylized cenotaphs that rose fifteen feet from the flagstone floor. He pointed to a particular section of hieroglyphs carved into the stone wall.
“This outlines some kind of manhood ritual…” he began. Sebastian pointed to a pictograph that strongly resembled the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t creatures that first attacked them. “These creatures. These hunters. They’ve been sent here to prove that they are worthy to become adults—”
“You’re saying they’re what? Teenagers?”
Sebastian shrugged. “Who knows how long these creatures live? Perhaps for thousands of years. However old they are, this is their rite of passage.”
His hands traced a pictograph—a stylized star field with what appeared to be a predatory raptor winging its way across the void.
“That’s why they didn’t carry those guns with them to begin with—”
“Part of the ritual,” guessed Lex.
“Right. They had to earn them, like a knight earning his spurs.”
Sebastian slapped his palm on the hard stone. “The whole story is here. The glyphs themselves are difficult to comprehend—not quite Aztec, not quite Egyptian—but they’re perfectly preserved. And with a little bit of informed speculation I can fill in the blank spots…”
He traced his hand along a stylized pictograph. Despite the bizarre, primitive iconography, Lex easily recognized the image. It was the Earth, as seen from outer space. And over the planet hovered a circular disk of fire, undoubtedly meant to represent a spacecraft dropping toward the planet from deep space.
“As I said before,” Sebastian began, “the Aztecs used multiples of ten. These symbols right here roughly approximate the Aztec symbol for ten, so a little mathematics is in order….”
Sebastian paused, calculating.
“Five thousand years ago they found a backwater planet… our planet Earth. They taught the primitive humans how to build and were worshipped as gods…”
His finger moved down the pictograph, to a familiar triangular shape, with a fiery disk hanging above it. Wavy lines surrounding the disk were clearly meant to depict a mysterious power source radiated by the spacecraft.
Knowledge, perhaps?
“In their honor, thousands of primitives labored for decades—perhaps centuries—to construct this pyramid and others like it.”
Sebastian paused over a shape etched in the wall, a twisted loop that turned in on itself like a snake swallowing its own tail.
“Like the great Ouroboros Worm of Gnostic mythology, in the broadest sense this kind of image is symbolic of the passing of long eons of time and the continuity of life. But in the symbolism of the ancients who built this place, it is meant to represent two things—a repetitive cycle, or a tradition. Something which occurs over and over again. But it also represents an actual creature, a being referred to here as ‘the Great Serpent.’ Through this text and probably others, the ancients were taught that their gods would return every hundred years, and that when they did, they would expect a sacrifice. It appears that humans were used as hosts for the Great Serpents.”
“Serpents?” Lex asked.
Sebastian nodded. “The ones that don’t look like us.”
Sebastian went on to explicate a mural depicting a parade of sacrificial victims being anointed by feathered high priests who were then laid out on slabs. Below this image was a pictograph representing eggs, and ritual instructions showing how each egg should be placed in the depression on the slab.
“This… egg is what was placed in the carved bowl, not the victim’s heart,” Lex observed.
“Apparently. And somehow these eggs fertilized the chosen ones who gave birth to the Great Serpents. Then the gods would battle them.”
Sebastian showed her a large-scale mural depicting the Great Serpent and the gods clashing in mortal combat.
“This image?” Lex asked, pointing to another mural depicting a single stylized Predator standing atop a pyramid, a crown of stars encircling its head.
“Like gladiators in a coliseum those two alien races would battle,” Sebastian explained. “Only the strongest survived. And the survivors would be the ones deemed worthy to return to the stars, to return home.”
“What if they lost?”
Sebastian showed Lex three images in sequence, a grim, doomsday triptych. The first was an image of a great pyramid, three stylized Predators standing on the pinnacle, a horde of Great Serpents slithering up the sides. The next image showed the Predators, arms raised, with wavy lines radiating from their wrists.
The third image was hauntingly familiar. It showed an explosion—a green tinted blast with a mushroom cloud hovering over it, an explosion that destroyed everyone and everything in its path.
“If the gods were defeated, then a terrible disaster would overtake the land, and their civilization would vanish overnight… total genocide… an entire civilization wiped out at once.”
Lex went numb. A mystery that had haunted her family for decades was finally solved.
“Then these creatures have been here before,” Lex said. It was not a question.
“Undeniably,” Sebastian replied. “Thousands of years ago, and many times since—perhaps recently.”
Lex faced Sebastian. “In 1979, right here on Bouvetoya Island, there was a mysterious nuclear detonation. No nation ever took the credit—or the responsibility—for the explosion, and Air Force scientists couldn’t figure out where the radioactive isotopes were mined, despite the fact that all uranium mined on earth can be traced by its unique molecular signature.”
“How do you know this?”
Lex crossed her arms. “My father was an Air Force researcher. Although he spent twenty years studying the event, he failed to trace the uranium isotopes used in the blast to any known source on Earth.”
Sebastian scratched his chin. “So they have been here before.”
“These… Predators,” said Lex. “They brought those creatures here to hunt!”
“Yes,” he replied.
“So we didn’t discover them?”
Sebastian shook his head. “I think the heat bloom was designed to lure us down here. This whole pyramid is a trap. Without us, there could be no hunt.”
Two rippling, translucent shapes appeared among the statuary. In a crackling burst of unleashed energies, the Predators winked into existence. Immediately, one warrior dropped into a fighting stance and scanned the area, spear at the ready.
The second Predator searched the corpses of Bass and Stone, looking for their missing weapons. Then it spied the acid-burned metal net. Ignoring Max Stafford’s corpse, the creature inspected the damage to the mesh caused by the Aliens’ caustic blood.
Unseen in the shadows, a horde of glistening black shapes slithered silently along the vaulted ceiling.
Hunting in a pack now, the Aliens scrambled among the walls, lurked in the darkness above, or curled around pillars.
Suddenly, choked to silence by the agile tail that looped around its throat, one of the Predators was hauled, kicking, up to the shadowy ceiling. A shower of luminescent blood and the clatter of broken armor striking the flagstones warned the second that death was stalking it, too.
The Predator whirled in time to see its comrade drop to the stone floor in great bleeding chunks of flesh. First a leg, then an arm, then the gory torso.
The Predator roared and drew twin throwing disks—one in each hand.
Suddenly, out of a black corner, an Alien face hugger launched itself at the Predator’s mask. In one smooth motion the warrior ducked and hurled a disk. The blade sliced the grasping, pink-white hugger cleanly in half. The creature exploded in a spray of acid blood that spattered the Predator’s mask and chest plate.
The Predator dropped the second disk and frantically struggled to remove the mask before the acid blood ate through to the soft flesh beneath. With a hiss, the vacuum seal was breached and the smoking mask clanged to the cold stone floor.
The Predator feverishly tore at its chest armor, which was already pitted and molten from the corrosive blood. The smell of burning flesh filled the corridor, and the Predator howled as acid burned deep into the muscle on its ribs, neck and chest.
Finally, the armor was thrown aside to reveal patches of chemically scorched skin still smoldering on the Predator’s torso and crablike face.
Naked and unmasked, the creature roared defiantly as it faced its attackers—two full-sized Alien warriors scrabbling across the floor to flank him. The Predator thrust its barbed spear, nipping the shoulder of the nearest Alien. The monster shrieked and retreated, even as its cousin knocked the spear aside to bear down on its opponent.
A third Alien dropped from the ceiling, its exoskeleton splashed with glowing green gore. The monster’s bony tail curled around the Predator’s leg, then yanked. The Predator shrieked in raw agony as the muscle was ripped from its leg bone. Hobbled, the hulking warrior tumbled to the floor as clawed hands tore at its now-vulnerable flesh.
Pinned down by the Alien’s weight, its movements restricted by the whiplike tail that enveloped its ravaged leg, the Predator thrashed and struggled, waiting for death to claim it. But even though the black obscenities crawled across the Predator’s heaving chest and spilled hot drool onto its naked face, they failed to deliver the anticipated fatal blow. Instead, the Aliens held the fallen Predator still and hissed expectantly…
Weakening, the Predator saw something stir in the blackness above its head. Craning its neck for a better look, its close-set eyes widened. The warrior had spied a huge alpha-Alien creeping out of the shadows, its teeth gnashing vigorously. Larger than its brothers, and more aggressive, it was clear to the helpless Predator that this being had taken command of the pack.
As it emerged from the gloom, the monster’s battered exoskeleton was revealed. From head to toe the Alien’s body was crisscrossed with wounds—including the burning brand made by the Predator’s high-tech metal mesh net.
The other Aliens backed away in deference as the monstrosity shambled forward. Bending low over the fallen Predator, the creature lowered its elongated snout as if sniffing its victim. Then two ebony hands encircled the Predator’s skull in an obscene caress before clutching the creature’s head and holding it fast to the floor.
The Predator thrashed about and its mandibles snapped empty air, but it was still helpless in the powerful grasp of the battered monstrosity.
As the warrior’s futile struggle continued, it felt cold, clawed feet crawling up its naked torso. Looking down, it spied another face hugger moving inexorably toward its head. Growling, eyes wide and darting from side to side, the Predator felt fear for the first time in its life.
Working quickly and efficiently, the face hugger slowly settled over its prey’s snapping mouth, muffling its whimpering cries….
Miller’s eyes opened abruptly. For a moment he didn’t know where he was. A feeling of ominous dread was his first clue.
He was standing—or at least he was upright. But when he tried to move, he found himself locked in place. A hard, black substance cocooned nearly his entire body. Only his right arm was free. The sleeve was ragged and heavily stained with blood.
Miller turned his head to the right, saw the two men hanging next to him, and his memory returned.
“Verheiden! Can you hear me?” he cried.
Verheiden, his face smothered by a face hugger, twitched and pulled against the hard shell that imprisoned him—the same substance that cocooned Miller. As Verheiden struggled, the parasite’s ropy tentacle tightened around his neck. After a moment, Verheiden stopped fighting, and his body slackened.
Next to Verheiden, Miller saw Connors, or what was left of him. The dead man’s chest had exploded outward, and he hung limply from the wall like some sick work of shock art. Although no face hugger clung to his features, which were frozen in an agonized expression, the Alien culprit that had robbed Connors of his last breath lay dead at his feet, legs pointed up toward the sky.
Miller heard a wet, dripping sound. Straining, he looked down. The egg of a soon-to-be-born face hugger was on the ground before him. Its petal-like lips were oozing as they began to open.
Miller pushed and squirmed against the cocoon. Then he saw Verheiden’s gun, still in its shoulder holster.
With one eye on the twitching egg, Miller stretched his arm. He could just barely touch the butt of the weapon.
The egg quivered and its lips parted. Long white legs emerged, probing the air.
Summoning all of his strength, Miller threw his body forward until his fingers closed on the handle. As the hugger leaped, Miller pulled the gun out of its holster and fired off a shot.
The hugger blew apart in midair.
Yet when it struck the floor—even with half its legs blown away—the stubborn creature still struggled to rise. Miller fired off two more rounds; each smashed the thing like a hammer.
“Score one for the Beakers,” he said.
Though sweet, Miller’s triumph was short-lived. Just beyond the dead face hugger, the stone floor was littered with dozens of quivering eggs, each one pulsing with unearthly life.