Alien: Isolation

Chapter Fifteen: End of the Hunt

   "Ripley, what happened?!" Ricardo's voice broke through. "You weren't supposed to jettison the module, yourself!"

"I didn't!" She yelled back, standing up on the wall that now served as the floor. "The sequence started as soon as I pulled the breaker switch!"

"Damn it, I had no choice." Waits explained as she fought to keep her balance. "But we did it, Ripley, it's off the station... I'm sorry it came to this, but you saved a lot of lives today."

The module tilted again so that it was upside down before she could reply, but instead of slamming into the ceiling, Ripley barely moved at all. In fact, she and everything else not bolted down was now floating in the air as they left the gravitational field of Sevastopol station, leaving her unable to control her direction, but she hoped, as she floated up toward the ceiling, that it would impair the creature as well. Of course, the thought of the creature still being after her caused the fear to return, since now without the flamethrower, she was even more helpless than she had been in San Cristobal.

"I don't wanna die in here, Ricardo!" She exclaimed, pushing off the ceiling so she was facing the floor. "Please, there has to be some way you can help me get out of this!"

"Hold on, I'm bringing up the module's schematics right now." His voice crackled through the radio. "Okay, the module is programmed to be self-sufficient, even when jettisoned, so the good news is that everything in there should still be working. Did the gravity field come online yet?"

Ripley was about to answer, but was interrupted as everything in the room, including herself, suddenly crashing back down toward the floor. She slammed onto the metal surface hard enough to make her cry out, but then she realized that the creature had most likely fallen back down as well, but hopefully all of the crashing equipment would mask the sound that she made.

"Yeah... its back on." She groaned while starting to get up. "Ricardo, the flamethrower's empty, and...

Her words stopped when the sound of crunching glass reached her ears, followed by more, and it didn't take long for her to realize what it was, especially since each one sounded a little bit closer. Looking around for a place to hide, and trying to listen over the sound of Ricardo's increasingly frantic requests for her status, Ripley spotted an open wall locker nearby. It was better than being caught out in the open, so she did her best to not make any noise as she moved toward it, and closed the door once she squeezed inside.

"I'm here, Ricardo." She whispered as the creature's head peeked around the corner. "The flamethrower's empty, and the creature's here... please help me."

As the creature walked into the room, Ripley noticed that it was not moving as gracefully as it had before. In fact, the creature now seemed to be limping; running one hand along the wall to steady itself while heavily favoring its right leg, as if it had been injured during the jettison sequence. Maybe this would allow her to outrun it if she made a break for... wherever she could go, but these thoughts were stopped as the creature stumbled, stopping itself from falling over by slamming its hand onto the holes that she was looking through. Putting her hand over her mouth to keep from crying out, she shut her eyes tight, but couldn't stop the tears from streaming down her cheeks.

"I've got it, Ripley." Ricardo said excitedly. "You have to get to the emergency airlock at the far end of the module from where you came in, but you've got to get there before the module is sucked into the gas giant's atmosphere."

Finally working up the courage to open her eyes just as the creature limped away from the locker, she waited until it had moved onto the next room before daring to silently open the locker door. Trying to creep out as carefully as she could, Ripley was on her tip-toes, turning her head to see that the creature was still in the next room, facing away from her, when it felt like her heart stopped for a moment as her next step produced the crunch of broken glass. The creature immediately turned around, growling as they stared at each other, and then shrieking as it started after her.