Zed 1

Zed
AVP
Xenomorph (male: his perspective) x Yautja (female)  

~~0~~

  My name is Zed.  That’s right, I have a name.  I began as eggs do.   Then I was a larva, I leaping on instinct.  Then came the change as a pupa.  See, as I morphed from a creature of instinct into a hunter of destruction, I was supposed to take on attributes of my host in order to be an excellent killer of said species.  I was to be a better hunter than my predecessors or even my ancestors.   Our species was created to be the ultimate predator even rivaling the creators that made us just to hunt us!  My host had other ideas.
   Let me back up for you.   My host’s species found my queen’s egg.  Brilliant and benevolent they thought they were rescuing an abandoned life form.  Even singing and coddling the ‘poor creature‘.  They had no idea they were lured into a trap.  The warm ship protected and gave our species a thriving hope along with plenty of food and hosts.  
    Even when our queen’s larva-form killed one of their own, they were compassionate and intrigued by a new life form.   They fawned, documented, and cooed over my growing queen.   They had no idea what they were dealing with.   Even when further eggs began to hatch and take a few more of their own, they thought nothing of it.   It wasn’t until their exploratory shuttle docked with the main long distance transport and our species out numbered the remaining live-hosts on the shuttle that they figured out… there was a problem. A big one.  An infestation that they were ill-equipped to deal with.

     Here on the main ship was where I was laid.   It was here that my host was taken.   It was here that my insignificant yet brilliant host turned the tides on my hive.  My host Ava (so her shipmates called her) decided that if my species was going to decimate her species with our aggressive violent ways, her benevolent and compassionate ways were going to lead and override my instincts.  Amazingly tenacity and arrogance from a weak species.
      As much as I was supposed to be sucking Ava’s DNA, adapting, and draining life energy from her body, she continued to walk the ship.  On top of that, she was shoving and pushing her will via telepathy into me as if I was one of her incubating young.
      My host was no fool.  Oh no, she saw how brilliant my sisters are.  Skilled hunters.  Honed instinct.  Adaptable.  Vicious and tenacious species.  Ava was determined to turn the tables on us and make one of us HER experiment of hope.
     And it worked.

     As I changed physically to challenge her species, she changed me to challenge mine.  My carapace grew, my legs got stronger and I began to understand a lot more.  She grew weaker as she continued through her duties and plan while I grew stronger mentally and physically in mine.
     Ava treated me as a last offspring not as a parasite that would take her life.  She pleaded with me to take her knowledge and feel her emotions.   She was not going to sacrifice her life without something to show for it.  She knows this ship and it’s occupants are all doomed.  We are stronger and more tenacious than her crew.  Did it frighten her?   A little, but makes her more mad than anything.

   As the time began to close, I became reluctant to leave.   It was warm and nice in here.  The signals she kept sending me were comfortable and encouraging.
    She caressed a hand over me, “You owe me to be something more.  I am begging you… go BE something!   I saw the ruins where we picked up your queen’s egg.  You have the potential to be more than foxes bred to be hunted.   You go show those Yautja hunters that you are more than they ever anticipated!”
    I held on as long as I could inside her soaking and absorbing everything she had to give.  At the time I didn’t understand everything she was feeding me, but I knew I needed to suck it all down quickly.   I did not want to leave, but biology overrides comfort.  With regret -yes regret- I punched through her chest.   As my pale young head came up into the cold new world, I got a ‘look’ at her.  Just to show her strength once more, she didn’t die right away.  With a shaky weak hand, she let one finger stroke over my wet head with a smile.  She grunted her last breath as blood ran out of her mouth.   “Go.  Be.  Live.”
     I heard the screaming and the tools being swung at me as I slithered out of Ava’s chest and skittered my way into a safe haven.   As I hid and molted, I watched my sisters carefully.   I listened even harder through our hive-mind.   I didn’t ‘send’, I was very careful to just listen and pay attention to my older sisters’ moves and strategies.   The strikes, the feedings with no remorse.   Just pure animalistic instinct.
    I watched my younger sisters emerge to their hosts in horror and turmoil.   Not at all like the expression on Ava’s face for me.  Yes, Ava had been in pain and grimaced, but she had a smile.   Nothing like these death expressions.
    Why only Ava?

     Still I watched and learned and soon enough began to understand.  Weakening, I was forced to feed or I would die.   That would have gone against Ava’s plan.  Who was I to feed on?  With a swallow, I took my first feeding.   It wasn’t very graceful, but it did the chore and I had energy again.  I knew it would sustain me, but I didn’t want to do that again.   Wrestling with my own biology and an emotion that I did not notice any of my other sisters projecting, I knew Ava had been right.  I was different.  It scared me.   Just how different am I?

     Before I could answer that, it all changed.   A new ship docked with this transport and a new being arrived.   On top of that, I felt the call of my queen-mother of all of us.  The blood now being shed was no longer these insignificant Hosts.   No, now it was my sisters who were being slaughtered.   I could feel their pain and my queen’s rage.  The Hosts and Yautja tried to team up to takes us on, but the ‘hunters’ had no patience for the weak ones and carelessly cast them aside like pests.   We were the prey, Ava’s species were insignificant!  
    These Yautja are not much different from us in their careless slaughtering.   My sisters killed Ava’s kind.  The Yautja killed my sisters.  Is this all there is to life?   Death?

    I had been careful to keep myself hidden from the hosts, my sisters, and the hunters but I could not hide from one.  At first I heard the ship’s klaxon as they spotted me and came after me.   I had no choice but defend myself for Ava’s sake.  Until I could fully understand what her mission was for me, I had to survive.  I had a strange feeling in my chest as I killed one of Ava’s kind by accidentally stepping on it in attempt to flee and hide again.  Cornered with my sisters, I watched a Yautja target the sister to my left and fired spraying her life fluids over me.  Just as he targeted the sister to my right, I heard an even louder ringing in my head overriding the klaxon and the cry of two dying sisters.   I curled my hands over my curved carapace and ran.   I did not ’look’ nor use my senses to guide my path.   I just…ran.  I didn’t strike with my arms or legs but I did dash and butt my head through the three Yautja targeting me.  One grunted as he fell on his rear, another swung out at me but I managed to trip him with my swishing tail in passing, the third just tracked me as I escaped.  That’s right the third and largest of them just watched me as I ran and the call in my head got louder.
     As I dashed away from the ones trying to physically take my life, the call through my mind is trying to take my control.  A blast of anger rocks my core making my senses fuzz and I physically jerk, stumbling into a wall.  The ringing ship’s alarm and bellowing hunters continue as wave upon wave of pain tries to shake my control to bits.   My queen’s personal Praetorian are even calling for reinforcements to her chamber as they are being pushed back and dying.  My queen and her guards are calling all of us to defend her.  Like sheep, they go.  Why am I going?  What is pulling me in?

     She can feel that one of her own is not complying willingly and it infuriates her more than the attack to her eggs and herself.  How DARE anyone question her CALL!   How DARE anyone even think besides herself!
     Wave after wave of mental assaults she berates the ‘one’ who is different causing fear and trepidations among the others as to who is the ‘different one‘.   That just happens to be me.  It’s tearing the hive-mind in half as we are hunted and dying plus the queen’s anger of a traitor in her mist.  Our hive will die swiftly because of…me.  I am the traitor for having a mind of my own?
     Traitor?!   I ‘blink’ and pull my back up straight.  Oh now Ava’s mission is starting to kick in.   Like a switch, I’m beginning to see things in a whole new light.  I take a few deep breathes and concentrate.  I need to stop cowering and become a hunter like I was bred to be.  Who my prey is, that is yet to be determined, but one thing is certain, I’m ready to fight for my life rather than die for another’s.

    Honing my echolocation and sniffing the air, I can sense my queen’s pheromones of rage and lust for blood.  I still hide and sneak my way to the queen’s chamber (no reason to get executed before I face my true battle).  Climbing along the ceiling, I decide to tract one Yautja thus turning the tables.  Besides, it will throw the others off a bit.  This is going along perfectly until one of my sisters strikes and kills my decoy.
     I’m careful in just waiting a moment and accessing the situation.   Already my kind is careful in their first strikes, but I am even more reserved than them.  Slowly I make my way to the chamber being very careful to avoid any others of any species.  As soon as I enter the room though, it’s all over.
     She whirls her great crested head and juts her vicious face right up to the ceiling where I entered.   She doesn’t hiss or snap this time.   What’s more frightening is that she hurrs ever so softly.  She’s luring me in.  I shiver.
    The battle against the queen, the mother of this massacre halts as her focus completely changes from the many to the one.   Everyone stops to see what has caused her whipping tail to still and her scream to turn to a soft noise.   It’s pointless for me to try staying hidden any longer.   After all, everyone can follow her attention and find me soon enough.
     I drop down and felt it.   The remaining two Praetorian turn and flank me as if I was the primary enemy.   The other Drones and Warriors stall in their own fights.   Even the Yautja warriors hold their weapons still.  No one drops their defenses, but they all do stall in their sparring to watch one lone Serpent stride confidently before the deadliest of all beings in the room.
     Turning my domed head slowly, I reach into the hive-mind to see if I am truly the only one.   Not that one, not that one either, nor that one…  
    Some of them cock their heads curious as to the probe down the hive mind.  The queen snarls lightly making me look back to her.  Oh, I’m not supposed to be able to send, only she is supposed to?  I flinch but hold my stand.  Yanking my head right and left, I take in the body language and the situation even closer.  I am different but I can’t tell if that is good or bad in my queen’s sights.
      In a right claw she holds a male of Ava’s species.   In a left claw she holds a female Yautja warrior.   Both are anxious as to what the queen has planned for them.  For normally she would have killed them by now, but not this time.   Oh….she was holding them captive until I arrived.   The only one of her offspring that is truly different.   Is that fear I smell coming from her about me?  
      With a wave of her second set of right and left limbs, she tells her personal guards to back away from me.  Both of her captures are quite surprised when she screams in my face but I do not back down.  I might be trembling viciously inside and down the telepathy-bond but I do not physically move.  That piques her as well.
      That second right clawed hand comes forth and she trails one tip of that hand straight down the center of my chest.  The curious touch has me pulling my back straight and I rise to my full height.   Puny and ridiculous compared to her twenty foot height, I only rival the female Yautja’s seven foot size. The obsidian claw slows until it stops at ever so slight bulge at the apex of my lower abdomen.   My sisters gasp.  The claw runs over it a couple more times and the queen hurrs making my spine chill in a new feeling.  Jerking, I look to the Praetorian at my left and then a Warrior three steps behind her.  Oh …none of them have a bulge here.  What is this?
      Once more, the queen strokes and the new chill becomes hard-cold making me stiffen and step back even going so far as to slap her claw away.  Stupid move!  That second left claw slaps behind my carapace digging in as I wrestle trying to get out of it’s grip.
    Possessively she snarls a mental grip through the link so that only I can hear her, and then amusement.   Sickening amusement.  She didn’t announce it to the others, no she is daring me to buck her authority and she will make me pay.  Putting me in my place, so to speak.
    My place?  What is my place?

     Raising her regal head she lifts me off the ground by my hardened head and turns me like some prized toy to everyone.   Through our hive mind-link she sends the message,

*This is not your sister.  This one has been corrupted by it’s host.  This one is a mutant.  A she-male that will be able not only queen but seed other species that we can not host within.  And this one is MINE to control, do not any of your forget it!*  
    She cackles and roars her mighty screech making Hosts, Hunters and Sisters all gape.   This is not a cry of pain, it is of triumph.  
     Of course the Hosts have no idea what was said.  As for the Yautja, I’m not sure if they understood exactly what she was thinking, but they did know this queen was up to something far beyond the normal Xenomorph-‘Serpents’ they traditionally hunt.   Fear rippled through them and Host alike. The Yautja warriors check each other to see if they noticed it too.  Yes, they all turn away from their sparring partners to concentrate their next attack on the queen and possibly me as well.  The Warriors and Praetorian prepare to defend her and…more.

    My Sisters hate me and want to kill me for finding the Queen’s favor.
    The Hosts want to kill me for being of a race that feeds and murders their own.
    The Predators want to kill me for that is what my race was bred for and do not want me to become the next great one to best them instead.

       Wriggling, squirming, and slashing my tail I try desperately to get away from them all, most of all my queen.  No, no, no!!  I know for sure this is NOT what Ava meant by me being something more.   She did not mean for me to bred more hideous monsters.  Yes, that’s right, my queen is a monster and I’m not talking about her body, its her mind.  The Yautja are no better in trying to make better and better ’prey’ only to allow other whole races to die in the process.  Are the primitive Hosts the only kind worth surviving?

   I want no part of any of this.  It’s too much for my little brain.  I was not meant to think this hard.  It’s tiring.  My head and body hurts, but I can’t give up or they will all win.  No, no!  I thrash and wriggle harder, she clamps down more beginning to puncture my skin and my acidic blood drips down.  Red?   RED?!  Not green like my sisters or the Yautja.  My poor heart is racing and I’m trapped.  Not just by one, and not just physically.

     Once more she sends a private pulse into my mind:  *Cease, it is futile.*  
     Yes she probably has a point there.  Conserve my energy.   I go limp and soften my attentions.   ‘Looking’ one way with my electro-reception sense, I can see the male Host has gone lax resolving in his fate to die and muttering a series of sounds over and over again.   Honing in now on the other capture, I see this female warrior is different than her ‘brothers’.  One, I have smelled no others of her kind on this hunt.   Two, her armor is slightly different than the other shorter hunters.  She wears no helmet.  Come to think of it, she didn’t have on when she watched me leave the room pushing her companions aside.  Hum, why would only one unhooded female be on this hunt- I sensed the queen’s curiosity to this as well and that is why she holds this one so greedily.
     One of the guards comes too close to my face extending her striking mouth.  My sisters have abandoned the Yautja warriors to make me their new target.  My queen is pulsing a warning to them all bringing me up closer to her great head.  My life is in serious peril.   I can not refuse my queen and live.  I can not take on all my sisters.   The Yautja I could probably hide and evade…for awhile.  The hosts are of no concern of mine.
     I feel my queen’s hot breath against the back of my carapace as she pulls me in closer to her.  I can ‘see’ the female hunter watching me intently.
 
     *Join me or I will cocoon you and use you as I see fit.*   A final threat.
     I growl and my sisters all extend their deadly mouths.  None of them have this thing called free will.  They do not choose, they just do as told.
      The soft amber eyes of the unshielded hunter looks to me and gives me the softest of nods with a soft noise.  Yes, she is brazen to give me her support with her head unprotected from my or her kind.
       That soft sound in the still room draws all attention to her and that’s when I strike.  With the queen’s head turned ever so slightly to look at her capture, I lash out my attach tongue.  Straight through the soft spot of her temple and straight into the deepest piece of her brain.   I scream out as loud as any of the other Xenomorphs of this hive.   Our telepathic bond is being shredded and stabbed as if hot acidic nails are being driven into all our brains and burning down each and every vein in our body.
      I retract and slam again and again until our Queen’s claws release all her captures including me.  I can’t leave just yet and drive my tail into her shoulder for purchase and grip into her chin as I strike a few more times doing my best to tear up the soft tissue of her brain.  I have to get her to stop projecting and holding rein over me.  
   I only stop when I see her start to sway and the Yautja turn on my writhing sisters.  Finally I drop down and in the mist of the melee, making my escape.  I’m almost to the door when I feel a tug on my tail.  I cast a glance only to see the female Yautja warrior clutching to a whip she has managed to lash around one of the last segments of my tail (above the twin knives).  Apparently, I am the one to drag her injured carcass from the barrage and battle.  She snarls at me to keep going and rips twin devices from her hip.   Slamming them together,  rapidly punches at them with her thumb.   With a flick of her wrist and grunt to me, the blinking bomb is flicked into the room.  She grunts again, but it’s too late.
    The ensuing concussion waves rip through the dying ship, my crumbling hive‘s dying telepathic bond which frazzles both my ecolocation and electro-reception.  In other words, I’m blind, deaf and staggeringly worthless.  My grace is that everything goes silent and then begins to fade to dark.   I’m hoping this will be the end and yet I’m sorry I couldn’t fulfill Ava’s wish for me.