ALIEN: Isolation

Into Sevastopol

Amanda slowly got up, the weight of her space suit restricting a lot of movement. She coughed violently, all over the place. It was quiet, now. She was the only person inside the airlock. Ripley got out of the space suit, so that she was only wearing her coveralls again. She didn't bother putting it away, so the empty suit just lay there.

Ripley pressed the button on the door that lead inside the station. The door made a whirring noise, before opening. She slowly crept out into a wide, dark hallway. The hallway was lit up at the very end, however, by flooring that had been opened up, and the sparking parts that lay underneath them, blocking the way.

It was assured Ripley wouldn't go that way as an exit, as at that very moment, a pipe burst, engulfing that section of the corridor in flame. Ripley jumped back slightly, not expecting it to happen.

Ripley looked around, trying to find another exit. Finally, something caught her eye.

An air vent, placed into the wall beside her.

Ripley hoped that there would be some - ANY - other way, than in one of those confined air vents, but she finally reasoned with herself that she could only get out of this ship one step at a time. And this was the first step.

Ripley let the vents circular door rotate open, before climbing inside. It was dark in there. Every step ripley took made a clanging noise. Her eyes were never fixed in one spot, always darting around, looking, listening for anything out of place.

Nothing came. It was just her, and the continuous clanging of her feet. Ripley eventually turned a corner in the vent, and came to an exit. She jumped out of the hatch, and looked around.

She was in a giant, ominous room, full of debris. It was long, and curved slightly. She looked to her left, and saw that nearly the entire left hand wall was a window. To her immediate left, were about a dozen shops, all with the shutters down. Ripley turned around and saw a sign.

Spaceflight Terminal.

This was obviously were every new station visitor came through before...whatever happened here. There was baggage and paper, and litter and all manner of possesions strewn all over the place.

It was as though people had left in a hurry.

'What the hell happened here?' Ripley asked nobody in particular. She was going to get to the bottom of this, whether anyone else liked it or not.

Ripley walked up one of the staircases, and turned left onto a platform that overlooked the entire place. Ripley examined a computer monitor. It blared a blank white-grey screen.

All of a sudden, a loud droning sound began to assault Ripley's ears. Louder and louder it got, before she realised where it was coming from. Ripley looked up, and out of the window/wall, to see the Torrens flying by. Her eyes lit up.

'Verlaine!' she screamed. 'Look, I'm right here!'

The Torrens just kept on trawling forward, Ripley screaming for Captain Verlaine to realise she was there. But, even worse for Ripley, The large metal shutters lining the edge of the ceiling began to lower, cutting off the ship's view of the inside, and Ripley's view of the ship, along with any hope that may have gone with it.

Ripley slumped, her back against the small computer terminal, crying a little. Amanda Ripley, was well and truly alone.

                                                          *

After a while, Ripley got over her sadness, and got up. She walked off the platform, towards a large door, quite similar to the ones on the torrens, only much much bigger.

The door opened easily enough, and she walked through it. It opened up on a large corridor, which looked like a long series of security checkpoints. The only problem was that you could barely tell that's what they were. Almost the entire ceiling had opened, and as such, whole sections of piping, and scaffolding and venting and grates among other things had absolutely totalled the ground.

It was like a maze, Ripley thought. A maze of wreckage.

Ripley slowly made her way through the wreckage, until halfway down the corridor, something caught her eye.

It was a small object, barely distinguishable from all the other wreckage. It was nothing too special, and there were probably dozens others around the station. But Ripley thought that this would be very helpful later.

The object was a 'lever jack'. It was kind of like a wrench mixed with a hammer, and then given a lengthened handle. Ripley picked the jack up, and examined it. She smiled faintly at the small victory she had achieved.

And then she kept on walking, further and further into the station.