Alien: Isolation

Chapter Six: No Data

"No!" She gasped, entering her security code again. "No, God damn it, no!"

She must have tried it a total of six times, but the result was always the same; the screen informer her that there was no data on the flight recorder, and that the files had been corrupted. Her mind had trouble accepting this, since the recorder being empty would have meant that now there was no feasible way for Ripley to ever find out what had happened to her mother. But that couldn't be, not after fifteen years of waiting and everything that had happened to her since arriving on Sevastopol.

"Damn it!" She yelled, getting so mad that she tossed the flight recorder across the room. "Damn it, why?!"

The loud bang when it hit the wall made her suddenly remember the details of her situation, and now Ripley clamped her hands over her own mouth, rushing over to the side of the room, and hiding in the corner in case anyone, or anything had heard the noise. Thankfully, no one came rushing into the room within the next few minutes, but that didn't mean that she was safe. Sure, Burke's people might not have wanted to come down after her, but as far as she knew, going back up was the only way to get to Comms, and the people were sure to still be looking for her, especially since she had taken Burke's...

"Hack tool." Ripley said to herself.

Her mind was only now just realizing what it was that she had taken off of Burke's belt, and now moving her other hand into the light, she saw that it was, in fact, an Access Tuner device. These rare items were usually issued to the Chief Engineer of installations such as Sevastopol, and only meant to be used in emergencies, such as when someone became stuck inside of an elevator because of power fluctuations or something. Even if the software was glitching out, or a callback code had been accidently changed, this device, when used properly, could match the machine's frequency, and enable it for administrator access.

Of course, this all depended on the device working in the first place, and according to the woman who had been using it on the elevator, something had gone wrong. That's it! She suddenly thought to herself as she turned the device over and opened the rear panel. Maybe she could fix the access tuner, and then give it to Burke and the others as some sort of peace offering. Holding the device into the light, Ripley smirked a little when she discovered that it was a single cut wire that was preventing it from working.

"Okay... okay." She said to herself as she carefully twisted the cut ends back together. "Please work... please work."

Closing the panel and pressing the power button on the side, Ripley sighed with relief as the device did a quick self-diagnostic before coming online. Cycling through the menus and options, it was clear that she had restored it back to working order, and now all she had to do was give it to Burke without anyone shooting her first... or after. This meant that she would have to announce herself before reentering the Transit Hub, so Ripley tried to figure out what she was going to say to them, as she made her way back down the darkened corridor. Everything that she came up with to say sounded like something out of a bad science fiction movie, but then her thoughts were interrupted as she heard something just as she reached the stairs.

Screams? Screams, and... gunfire? Again, it took her a few seconds to process what she was hearing, but once she did, it became clear that Burke and his crew had become involved in some kind of firefight back upstairs. Ripley swallowed hard as she realized that this meant there would be even more lunatics up there waiting for her... then again, it could also mean that she had a chance to hack the elevator and escape while they were killing each other.

A little morbid, yes, but she had already been on the receiving end of Burke's negotiating skills, so she hurried back up the stairs, all the while the sound of screaming and gunfire getting louder until it suddenly stopped. The silence came on so suddenly that it stopped her in her tracks just as she was entering the Transit Hub, and that was when she saw them. Bodies... there were human bodies lying on the floor around the central desk, more specifically the bodies of Burke and his crew. Of course, there seemed to be a few less than the remembered, but then another question popped into her mind: