Resin spread from the edge of the underbelly of Ace Chemicals. Tunnels had been dug all over the property, reinforced and strung together with resin like black spiderweb, holding the place together while also making it look like nothing that was ever supposed to be on Earth.

The grip of the teenager tightened on the hilt of her blade. A drone peered over a waist-high column of resin, and its head hit the floor before it could do anything more than stand up slightly higher.

Her watch counted down the seconds. The drone was already within the hive.

Her eyes shut for a moment.

“@#$% me,” she swore, and then turned toward the tunnel. Energy, invisible to the naked eye, warped around her and she Blinked forward into the tunnel, and then again, deeper into the structure.

The skeletal look of the Hive interior never failed to give her the chills. The rise of the vertebrae from the wall, the arches that they formed near doorways, it was disgusting to see, and the smell and the feel of the resin never failed to make her skin crawl.

Luxuries. Fear was only useful as a path to bravery. Focus.

Hallie Blinked deeper into the hive, avoiding any Xenomorphs she encountered aside from the first initial drone.

They already knew she was here. The Queen could sense her.

Boots thudded onto the thick resin coating the floor of the central storage room within Ace Chemicals. Bodies were strung up into the resin, their chest gaping like the tunnels the Xenomorphs crawled through. Gore covered the floor; discarded intestines, missing limbs, a few severed heads, and piles of dead Xenomorphs that were slowly being absorbed by the resin. Most were killed by weapons fire, but a few she noticed were killed by blades; batarangs, and likely, her own blades.

Finding someone with dark hair in all this resin and with all these people was not an easy task.

The eggs in front of so many of the bodies proved a problem, too. 

The skittering of long legs across the resin drew her attention and she turned partially and flicked her wrist, cutting the facehugger in half.

In retaliation, the four flaps at the top of each egg around the room slowly peeled open, and the squirming arachnoid within rose up and perched on the petals from their revolting flowers.

Their coiled tails sprang, and she Blinked. Time slowed around her and she weaved her blades through the air.

A dozen dead facehuggers clattered to the ground around her, the neutralized acid splattering harmlessly against the resin-covered floor. A slow exhale left her lips and she turned back toward the people strung up.

There she was. Her mother’s youthful face and small stature was hidden behind a man of average size and girth, and with a hole through his torso. Hallie quickly made her way over toward her mother and cut the resin around her with a couple of surgical strikes.

Cienn flopped to the ground. There wasn’t a hole in her chest yet, so they still had some time. Even in the semidarkness of the hive, the black burn marks on her mother’s arms, legs, and bare feet were visible.

The spare blade was tucked away into her chestplate and she hoisted her mother’s unconscious form onto her shoulder.

Getting in was easy. Now she had to face the hard part. She couldn’t Blink while carrying another person.

Drones moved into the room, seeking out the cause of the dead facehuggers. Hallie activated the blade in her left hand.

Their ever-familiar shrieks and hisses filled the air. Noises that she’d heard since she was 7 years old, that had haunted her dreams for as long as she could remember, that had been burned into her memory when she watched the inner jaw bust through the back of Sandra’s head.

When she watched Chloë get dragged off by drones, missing half of her limbs and one of her eyes.

When she watched Marco detonate a bomb and take himself in the explosion in an effort to take out a Queen.

Their dog tags were still wrapped around her neck, under the chestplate. They hung close to her heart, so she’d never forget the things they sacrificed to try and bring humanity a better tomorrow.

The drones moved into the room and she set her mother’s frail form down onto the ground.

Blink.

The drones fell to the floor in pieces and she returned to the side of her mother, flicking the hilt back into her chestplate and picking up the unconscious woman.

She was so frail-looking. Her skin, which had always been pale, seemed even paler now, and the burns that marred her skin were new, not the faded tattoo-like things they’d become.

Footsteps were never fully sure on the resin, and this was no different. With each step, she had to make sure she didn’t over or under balance. The resin squished underneath her feet.

Her problems had just begun.

The shriek of a Praetorian echoed throughout the hive and she grit her teeth in response. If she set down Cienn now, a drone might drag her back into the nest.

Her blade activated, the blue glow of the energy surrounding the acid-neutralizing metal cast on the black of the resin wall to her right.

The Praetorian barreled toward her, the mighty roughly arrow-shaped crest of the creature made for a difficult wall to break, so she didn’t aim for the wall. Hallie waited and then jumped, angling her body horizontally and spinning with her arm out, cutting through the neck of the Praetorian and severing the head from the body entirely. The body continued running while the head crashed to the ground; dust from the ceiling drifted to the ground as the weight of the head shook the walls.

The body continued on, stumbling over its own limbs until it dropped to the ground with a thud.

Hisses—those dreaded hisses—reverberated through the air. Like demons ascending from hell, the Xenomorphs that were dormant in the walls, healing from prior battles, emerged from the resin, the skeletal forms of their mesoskeletons perfectly blending into their surroundings in their own house. A house of evil.

Pure, unadulterated malice, given flesh and form.

Hallie danced; her blade swung through as many as could come at her at once, wide sweeping motions to cut through as many as possible with the least amount of effort. Their bodies hit the ground with distinctive thuds whenever she rent another one in half, and another, and another, bisecting a third, a fourth, beheading the next four in a single strike, a dance of life and death where she gained no true ground.

For every Xenomorph she killed, its remains served as a pile to block her way. Sweat beaded her brow and as she dispatched another drone, a claw raked across her back, leaving long furrows. Her suit immediately sprayed the medigel over the wound to stem the bloodflow.

“AHHH!” she cried out in pain.

The smell of blood hung in the air. The warm fluid spilled from the wound. The bloodflow had been stopped for the moment, so she wouldn’t bleed out.

Hallie forced herself to her feet and went back for the tunnel she’d used to get in here in the first place.

Through the tunnel, ten Warriors emerged and stalked toward her, forming a half circle. They moved with precision and a ruthless, beautiful grace that made her jaw clench in disgust.

Hallie shuddered. The gash in her back limited her mobility, her greatest strength. Warriors fell just as quickly to her blade as drones did, but they were faster, and more likely to overpower her through other means.

“Sorry, mom,” she whispered to Cienn’s unconscious form. “I really tried. I promise, I did.”

The Warriors shrieked as they closed in on her, and she set her mother down, just as three of the Warriors jumped.

She Blinked, angling herself to run along the ceiling for three steps, and then twirled through the air; the blade found purchase deep within the necks of all three warriors, slicing through the thick mesoskeleton and decapitating them.

Her body angled and she landed on a Warrior, slicing through it with her blade, when her back throbbed and send waves of pain radiating throughout her body like a brand touching her skin.

The Blink ended and Hallie crashed against the wall beside the tunnel opening. Four of the Warriors died, leaving six left. They wouldn’t harm Cienn, because she had one of them growing within her.

“AHHH!” the scream came from Cienn, as a white Xenomorph punctured through her shirt and pushed through to come into the world.

A psychic vision pounded into Hallie’s mind and she smacked her hands against her temples as the vision seared itself into her memory.

“Wha-?” she cut off as the vision ended, and the small thing crawled away from them, a tiny quarter-sized disk of blackness embedded within its head. She shook her head and looked at the Warrior standing in front of her.

The blade hummed through the air, decapitating the front face of the Warrior in an instant. The corpse fell to the side and she Blinked, a barely-controlled and sloppy rush through the room with her sword active, weaving her way through the creatures until she stopped beside her mother.

Most of them died, but one of them only lost a tail. A miscalculation of an angled strike on her part.

Pain from her back surged up her body.

A powerful grip landed on her shoulder, and her eyes widened.

Hallie bounced off of the ceiling to land on the ground beside her mother and felt the air leave her lungs. The tail-less Warrior loomed over her and reached down to grab her head.

A glowing blue blade emerged from the banana-shaped head of the alien, and she carved it toward her, cutting the head in half. With a flick of her wrist, she fully killed the creature, and it toppled over to her side.

“Oh,” she sighed in relief, and her head hit the resin ground. Only for the smooth carapace of another drone loom over her.

“$%#@!” she yelled, and she rolled to hear the THUNK of the bladed tail striking the resin floor echo through the hive.

“GOD,” she screamed, and she got onto her knees; the blades cut through the legs of the creature and sent it onto the ground, where it shrieked pathetically before she decapitated it.

So many more shrieks came from other parts of the Hive, and she hastily tucked her right hilt away before she kneeled down and wrapped an arm around her mom. Fireman carry was the easiest way to carry her out of here.

The waning light at the end of the tunnel screamed her salvation. She rushed for it while shrieks and hisses followed her like the screams of the damned shouting at a lost soul being rescued and brought back to life.

Cienn was coughing and bleeding on her. Fireman’s carry was a horrible idea if she wanted to stop her mother from bleeding out, but it was the fastest way to carry her out at the moment.

Hallie exited the Hive tunnel with Cienn on her back, only to trip on a bladed tail at the exit.

Cienn’s wounded form fell onto the resin just outside the tunnel entrance and Hallie rolled onto her feet, sliding the second hilt from its spot in her breastplate.

Towering over her was another Praetorian, and it shrieked a challenge, drool and spittle flecked onto her face and she winced at their mildly acidic contents damaging her skin.

Warriors and drones emerged from the Hive and she backed up, standing in front of her mother’s broken form with the blades engaged. There had to be thirty or more Xenomorphs standing in front of her.

The Praetorian roared the challenging call; her blades answered, hacking through the first two drones that tried to reach her; and upward slice through the next Warrior, sliding back a step and leaning into her knees to avoid a leaping Warrior, then counterattacking, lacerating it across the back with a fluid strike and bringing both swords horizontally toward her right, and then a quick upward slash, cutting through another warrior, to backflip over a low tail swing from another drone. Her feet kicked off against a Warrior, sending it stumbling backwards, while the tips of each blade seared through the heads of two other drones, and when she hit the ground and crouched, it cut each of their heads in half.

Hallie backflipped again, but this time angling herself to land on the other side of Cienn, and a very low backflip at that. She hit the ground and lunged forward, striking out vertically to cut off the arms of the Praetorian, and then pivoted on her legs, swinging them around to cut across the crest of the creature.

A tail cut across her right side; a claw shattered her breastplate.

Hallie Blinked, kicking off the head of the Praetorian and cutting through six Warriors before she Blinked again, teleporting onto the back of the Praetorian and moving with a scissor motion, the blades searing through the neck of the beast and decapitating it.

A claw raked up her right leg; she Blinked, a primal SCREAM escaping her as she channeled too much energy into the next Blink.

Time slowed, and she teleported at the speed of light, cutting through every Xenomorph there in rapid succession.

The Blink ended. Her right elbow pressed into the resin, her kneecaps touching Cienn’s side while her left hand shook and clung to her blade. The Xenomorphs lay in pieces around her, and she felt her vision blur.

Silence ruled the area for the moment. Silence, broken almost immediately by the drip drip drip of blood from both her and her mother. Hallie placed a hand over her chest and brought it back slick with blood.

“My dogtags?” she whispered, then felt her neck, staining her skin with blood while she frantically searched for them.

A Warrior walked out of the tunnel and turned toward her with a hiss. Hallie raised the sword toward it; a challenge.

Shadows rose from the ground and entangled the creature, and a spike shot up from the resin, spearing it through the head. Cienn opened her eyes, and the air around her form began to warp with a dark energy.

“Cienn?” Hallie whispered, and the woman sat up and looked down at her broken ribs jutting out of her skin.

“Whaaaat the FUCK?” she screamed. Cienn blinked a few times in rapid succession. “THOSE ARE MY RIBS! I’M NOT SUPPOSED TO SEE THOSE!”

“I’m going to get you out of here.” Hallie uttered the words and then winced. Her vision swam and blurred, and her head pounded like someone playing a war drum. Focusing was getting so difficult now…

Hallie wrapped her arms around Cienn and lifted her up, bridal style, then turned and walked away from the tunnel entrance.

“I’m…” The words abruptly ended as she stumbled over a corpse about twenty feet from the entrance and they both hit the ground with audible thuds and grunts.

A pair of boots stepped out of a jeep not far from them, and two machetes were pulled from their sheaths.