.x.

RUN! screamed my brain, watching as the insidious bulk of the alien drew ever closer. I saw, from the very peripheral of my vision, Celtic rising from where he had landed. Scar too was approaching, limping heavily from the direction that he'd been thrown. Although by now I was fairly certain that it would take more than these two predators to bring down the alien, I knew I had no choice but to aid them in the only way I could. I lifted the shotgun, pumped a shell into place, and fired all in one breath. The shot struck the alien where its head joined its neck with a small spatter of caustic blood. It was minor injury, yes, but the alien reared its head back and hissed in pain.

I took that opportunity to turn and flee.

It was after me in a heartbeat. The thunder of its pursuing footsteps shook the ground I ran across. My accelerated breathing only further irritated my injured side and all I could do was move in a staggering gait. I had no idea where I was going, was only aware of the fact that there was very, very little separating me from death this time around. I careened wildly around the corner of a building, gripping the sides to stop me from falling on the ice. I'd only just let go when the alien screamed again. and I whirled around just in time to see Scar twisting through the air, driving his spear directly through the alien's skull. He landed in a tumble several feet away and came up fast. The alien stumbled to the side, tossing its head in agony, the attached chain whipping about. It clawed furiously at the spear which protruded from both sides of its body. Too late I realized it was falling and too late I spun about and made to run—the alien fell heavily into the building, knocking down the walls and sending debris flying everywhere.

I fell to my knees, shielding my head from the pieces of wood and tin that rained down. As the alien struck the earth, still screaming, its tail came hurtling towards me in its throes of agony. I couldn't dodge it, even though I tried. It struck me mid-section, launching me into the air. I curled in on myself to try to soften the impact. I hit the ground on my back, skidding several feet before coming to a halt. Trying to breathe in alternating wheezes and gasps, I struggled to my feet and looked around frantically for my shotgun. It was nowhere to be seen. Movement caught my eye, alerting me to the scene before me. The alien was on its feet again and had managed to snap the spear that impaled it in half. Part of me was horrified that it had survived such a direct blow to the head. The other part cursed me for being a naïve fool. Scar was firing at it again with his cannon, backing away steadily. The alien followed, blood pouring forth from its wounds to land steaming on the snow below. So intent was it on Scar that it didn't see Celtic approaching from the side, spear in hand.

Celtic leapt lithely into the air, intent on impaling the creature as his companion had. Suddenly the alien twisted about, arms flailing, catching Celtic in mid-flight and throwing him back. His spear was knocked from his grasp and it spun end over end to land in a snow bank several feet from where I stood. I lunged for it, digging frantically through the snow until my gloved hands came in contact with the hard, smooth haft. I whirled around, armed once more, and felt my eyes widen in dismay.

The alien had impaled Celtic directly through the chest and had lifted him high above ground with a simple flexing of its tail. His neon blood rained down from the wound. Scar was circling the alien, trying to flank it. The alien shrieked before its hidden jaws burst forth, piercing Celtic's mask and the skull underneath. More blood and other, thicker pieces of gore spattered the ground, and with a dismissive flick of its tail the alien discarded the corpse. Scar attacked then, several rounds fired from his cannon in quick succession, and as the alien wheeled about to retaliate he darted quickly beyond its reach. It was completely focused on the sole surviving predator now, and while I had no longer had the shotgun, I did have Celtic's spear.

I made a decision then, one that was ludicrous, but one that was demanded of me. I could have run from here and tried to leave everything that had occurred over the last long hours of my life behind. It would have been futile anyways, I knew, because if I fled and Scar fell, the alien would inevitably hunt me down. A second after I'd steeled my nerves and hardened my resolve, I heard Scar roar, and my eyes moved from the spear I held to the two combatants before me. Scar had been taken down—I wasn't sure how—and as he struggled to his hands and knees, the alien's tail hovered above his back, waiting for the right instant to strike—

Suddenly I was shouting, running full tilt towards the creature. It wasn't deterred by my charge—its tail still trembled in eager anticipation. I shoved the spear as hard and as far into its torso as I could. It reared back, shrieking, and I dodged around its thrashing body, trying to avoid being hit. There was no way I could avoid the blood that ran in rivers from its body and scrambling out from beneath I felt sudden searing agony down the length of my back. Blinded by the pain, I never saw what it was that struck me next.

I must have blacked out. Quite suddenly I was aware of lying face down in snow with pain like I'd never known coating my entire spine. It took me two attempts to roll over, and when I did there was a jagged, lancing sensation in my side that informed me that if my ribs hadn't been broken before, they most certainly were now. Panting in an attempt to draw breath, I turned my head to see what it was I expected to see—Scar dead, and the alien triumphant above him.

What met my eyes was nothing of the sort. Scar wasn't dead. He stood defiant before the screaming black beast. I saw that his cannon had been knocked from his shoulder. He held his shuriken in a ready stance, but what prompted me to struggle into an upright position were the other hunters appearing from seemingly out of nowhere, surrounding the alien. They were uncloaking themselves, shaping themselves out of the air, and there were more of them than I could count. Some were masked, others not. They began their assault on the alien, some using cannons like Scar's, others wielding weaponry I'd never seen before. The alien wasn't by any means daunted by this new assault. I watched in horrified awe as it impaled one of the hunters and removed three more from battle with a single swipe of its arms.

I tried to gain my feet and failed. I simply did not have the strength, and so I sank numbly to my knees. As finally the alien faltered beneath the combined strength of the hunters, as finally it tottered before falling heavily to the earth, I wondered with vague detachment which would kill me first—my wounds or exposure to the cold. So lost in my agonized haze was I that time passed without my noticing. I opened my eyes suddenly to find Scar standing above me. Blinking my vision to clear the haze, I saw that beyond him the others of his race had gathered around the alien's corpse, taking their own trophies.

"Lex." Sebastian's voice under Scar's command returned my eyes to him. It took me a long stretch of moment to realize that we weren't alone—standing beside Scar was another of his kind. I managed to stand, a torturous movement, and when I'd gained my feet I couldn't stop the way my body swayed. Struggling to focus, I studied the new unmasked arrival. This hunter seemed even more daunting than Scar and Celtic. He was taller than both. He trilled in the manner I was familiar with, the sound deep and guttural, and his mandibles moved slightly with the movement. It was evident in his face, in the dark eyes that regarded me evenly, in the long fall of almost pure white hair that this hunter had seen many, many more years than either Scar or Celtic had. His tusks were notched and myriad scars decorated his strange skin. He wore several pieces of armor from which hung strange and outlandish skulls and bones, and falling from where it was attached to his shoulders was a heavy, draped, crimson cloak. In one hand he held something that appeared to be a cross between a staff and a spear, with several rigid, curved blades rising from the area near the middle.

He remained utterly still, the only movement the slight twitching of his mandibles, but he didn't have to do anything to frighten me. I was already terrified. Scar moved to stand beside me, growling as he did so, and with one hand under my chin he turned my face to the side, exposing to the elder hunter the marks I'd been given. He moved his fingers to my wrist, and turned my arm to expose the scratches and burns that blemished my skin from palm to elbow. Finally he pried my shirt away from the wound at my shoulder, but as he did so it pulled abruptly at the spots on my back where fabric and flesh had become one, fused together by the large alien's acid blood. With a muted sound of agony, I dropped to my knees as the world darkened around me.

Only with Scar's steady hand on my upper arm did I manage to get to my feet again. I raised my gaze to meet the piercing eyes of the elder, wondering what judgement it was I awaited. I knew I wasn't going to remain conscious much longer. At my side Scar jerked suddenly as if in pain but made no sound. My attention snapped back to the elder as he lifted the strange spear and held it out before me. The length of it retracted with a speed that made me gasp; what he held now considerably smaller and deadlier looking, with a small chain that dangled from the grip. I stared at it for a moment before lifting the arm that Scar didn't have a hold of and wrapping my shaking fingers around it. The elder relinquished it to me, rumbling, and inclined his head. It was a gesture of respect, I realized, and this weapon was being given to me as an acknowledgement of those I'd killed and all I'd survived.

"Thank you," I murmured, bowing my own head, feeling strangely honored.

Scar made a sound then, a scream I'd never heard from him before, and he clenched my arm so tightly I cried out before he released me and staggered away. The elder chittered as Scar clutched his midsection. From the corner of my eye I saw other predators, drawn by the commotion, quickly approaching. Scar fell to one knee with a strangled snarl, and from his chest erupted something grotesque, something nightmarish, something alive—

"No," I whispered in distraught disbelief. I knew what it was, I knew … Suddenly the other hunters were surrounding the still roaring Scar, obscuring my view of him. I tried to step around, tried to see what was happening, but the elder was suddenly before me, shaking his head. As I tried to move past him he pushed me back roughly with one hand to the chest. I stumbled but didn't fall. Scar was being taken away, his body supported by many of the other predators, but I still couldn't see the thing that had burst forth from him. I made an attempt to follow, but again the elder inserted himself in my path, giving me a warning snarl. Hopelessly I watched over his shoulder as my companion was carried out of sight, and when I could see no more of him the elder stepped back from me. For one long moment we regarded each other, regal leader to bedraggled and broken human, and with a final rattling growl he spun about and stalked in the direction of the other predators.

I didn't follow. I knew it wouldn't be permitted. Instead I stared after the elder long after he'd vanished, my mind trying to comprehend all I'd seen and all I'd been exposed to. Deep in my core a constant torturous agony had settled. I had to find warmth, I thought dazedly, I had to find help.

I took one step, and then another, before succumbing to merciful oblivion.

.x.

Restriction was the first thing I became aware of—my arms and legs were bound tightly together. I was immobilized. Sluggish alarm rolled over me, but when I tried to push against my bonds I found I lacked the strength. Sounds were filling my ears, echoes and bits of voices that I struggled to piece together. When I realized they were human voices, when I realized I could understand some of what was being said, I fought the heavy lethargy that encompassed me and opened my eyes.

There were lights directly above my face, bright enough to hurt my eyes. I rolled my head to the side, and found that there was a man there, a man filling a syringe from a small glass bottle. I tried to speak, couldn't, and tried again with a mouth that felt like it was stuffed with cotton.

"Where …?" I croaked.

The answer came not from the man with the needle, but from another person standing on the other side of me. I turned my head to see a woman with short dark hair and even darker eyes standing there. Her expression was one of grave concern. She laid a gentle hand against my unmarked cheek and said, "You're on the Piper Maru, Ms. Woods. They just brought you in ten minutes ago."

The Piper Maru. I closed my eyes in relief but opened them again as I felt the distant prick of the syringe in my flesh. "You're suffering from the first stages of hypothermia, Ms Woods," said the man as he emptied the contents of the needle into me, "You're lucky they found you when they did. You're in rough shape besides that. What happened to you down there?"

Death, I wanted to tell them. Aliens. Hunters. Monsters. Instead my mind roiled as frantically as it could in its drugged state, searching for a suitable excuse. "Explosion," I mumbled finally, fighting the urge to drift away again, to let myself fall into whatever void beckoned. "Cavern … collapsed …"

"We gathered that much," the woman said. Her fingers had moved to the other side of my face and were tracing gently the marks Scar had made. "What we don't know is how the explosion happened."

I was saved from formulating an answer by the man, who had picked up something from my bedside table. It was the weapon I'd been given by the elder predator. The man tilted it to examine it closer in the overhead light. "Did you find this down there?" he asked me curiously.

"Yes."

It was very hard for me to keep my eyes open, though I tried. Noticing this, the man laid the weapon down and gave me a warm smile. "Sleep, Ms. Woods. You need it, and you can tell us your story once you've healed."

My story, I thought, hysteria lining my exhausted mind. You wouldn't believe my story …

And then I was adrift again in a world without pain.

.x.

When I awoke next, it was to find the man and woman in the room with me again. My head still felt fuzzy, my entire body felt numb. I was obviously still very sick, so I laid still with my eyes closed and listened to their voices, which sounded as though they were coming to me from within a long tunnel.

"—swears he saw something in the mess hall." said the woman. Distantly, I felt my left arm being bound in gauze.

"He drinks too much," replied the man dryly, his voice coming from the foot of my bed.

"Mhmm."

There was a pause, and then the man asked, "What did this something look like?"

The woman chuckled, the sound equal parts incredulousness and mirth. "He said it was human shaped, but that it moved like it was a part of the air or something. He's dead serious about it, too. He got upset when the others told him he needed to lay off the rye …"

Listening to their conversation, I felt something cold and heavy settle within the core of me. It can't be, it can't, I said silently over and over again. It couldn't be.

The woman had finished bandaging my arm. She gave me a gentle pat on the cheek before I heard her footsteps walking away from my bed. She and the man were still talking, but their voices soon faded from earshot. Sudden and inescapable weariness descended on me again, and as it washed over me I let myself believe that what I'd heard was just a dream. And as sleep tightened its welcome tendrils around me, I told myself that the familiar, comforting, rumbling growl that filled the room in which I lay was only a figment of my imagination.

It had to be.

.x.