Alien: Isolation

Chapter Fourteen: KG348

Carefully backing away until she found herself up against the security shutter, Ripley could barely force herself to breathe as the creature followed. There was nowhere for her to run to or hide this time, and now it was stepping through the open door from the Server Hub to reception, when she remembered that she still had the make-shift flamethrower. So she fumbled around to get the weapon ready, and then pulled the trigger, releasing a stream of chemicals into the pilot light.

The result was an intense orange light filling the room as a wide cone of fire erupted toward the creature, making it shriek as its body was engulfed. As it had done in San Cristobal, the creature nearly fell over backwards in its effort to escape, and it had gotten all the way back to the open doorway, when the fire on its black, oily body went out. This left the creature literally smoldering as its gaze locked back onto her, and with an angry shriek it rushed in for the kill, stopped again by the flamethrower while Ripley let out her own terrified scream that was just as loud.

"Get me out of here!" She screamed into the radio as the creature retreated. "Waits, Ricardo, get me out of here, now!"

"Ripley, are you okay?!" Ricardo's voice replied. "What's going on in there?!"

"Damn it, Ripley, you have to calm down." Waits' voice interrupted. "This is all part of the plan."

"Fuck your plan!" She yelled, before driving the creature back again. "You locked me in here with this God damn thing, and now it's just... it's just...

This time when the creature was driven back, it didn't immediately come after her again. Instead, it just glared at her for a few seconds, and then it just... walked away. Letting out a growl that almost sounded irritated, the creature marched back into the Server Hub, and then it turned left, and that was when she lost sight of it. Well, once its tail vanished around the corner as well, that is.

"Ripley, are you still there?" Waits asked as she watched it go. "Ripley, what is your status? What happened with the creature?"

"I'm fine, Waits... like you care." Ripley replied with anger and fear in her voice. "The creature just... it just left; walked away into the Server Hub."

"Hold on, let me see if I can track it." Ricardo added. "Ah, there it is... it's moving toward the far end of the room, and I think it just entered one of that section's internal cooling ducts. The motion trackers aren't picking it up anymore, meaning that it's just sitting there, so if you're going to do something, now's the time."

"Okay, Ripley, here's the deal." Waits continued as she leaned to see more into the next room. "I can't let you out without that thing escaping, too, so you're going to have to lure it into the final cage, and to do that you're going to have to go through the Server Hub and into the next corridor. From there, you need to lure the creature to an area called Gemini Labs Module KG348; just follow the signs, and let me know when you get there."

Oh, it was that easy? She thought as she tried to keep the flamethrower ready with her trembling hands. Then he should have just said so in the first place, since there was no pressure or anything. It was highly doubtful that the Marshal was going to change his mind and risk letting the creature out in order to free her, so Ripley swallowed hard, and summoned all of her courage while moving toward the Server Hub.

As she reached the doorway, and peeked around to see if there was any sign of the creature, she realized that now she was even more scared than when it had been attacking. Yes, it had been horrifying to have to face it directly, but at least she had known where it was. Now it had apparently gone into the cooling ducts above the server towers, meaning that it could drop down out of any of them... at any time. So she went back to using the careful approach, trying to not make a sound as she began to creep past the server towers.