Chapter 11 - Abandoned

 

CHAPTER ELEVEN

“Abandoned”

David walked around the huge platform and sat down in the central alien throne; like some toy out of place and scale to the chair it sat in. The controls in front were incomprehensible; even to the synthetic man who, at this point in time, was the most knowledgeable being in the galaxy on the subject of the extinct Engineers. There were no buttons, only a lifeless holographic emitter and two long rows of yellowish balloons filled with some sort of gelatinous matter. David pressed one of his fingers firmly into one of them at random; the throne spun forty-five degrees and an emission matrix spread outward in a virtual explosion. From the corner of David’s right peripheral, he saw two holographic renditions of Engineers walk into sight onto the platform. Both of the Engineers held a helmet under one of their massive arms. At long last, David heard their grave voices speak in the Indo-European that he had studied so diligently.

“Is everything in place?”

“Yes, Hibernation Stasis prepared.”

One Engineer walked over to the far side of the platform and the second walked towards the seat where David was sitting. The synthetic jumped out of the seat as the holographic rendition of the Engineer sat down. David paid close attention to the manner in which the second Engineer operated the oversized terminal. His hands pressed a series of the yellow bulbs that David’s mind easily committed to memory, and then motioned his right hand and a large orange orb appeared, sending orange and green surges of energy to each of the pressed buttons and all around the forearm of the Engineer. He picked up some kind of flute and blew a few notes, which David’s audible sensors easily committed to memory, and then put it back down in the spot where it still laid eons later. An enormous holographic map materialized above the platform – it was a full map of the entire multiverse. The spot in which the first Engineer had walked to was now alight with buttons and holographic readings above the surface. It was the system of Acheron and its moons. David had utterly passed the sarcophagi by; believing them to be nothing more than pillars of metal or stone. The first Engineer had activated one and then walked slowly over to his brother still operating the terminal. He knelt to speak to him; David approached and listened closely.

“Is everything prepared for our journey?”

The second Engineer looked up blankly.

“Yes, unfortunately we had a malfunction with one of the vessels. It has crashed on the next moon and we have put it on quarantine.”

The first Engineer showed no emotion in his response.

“What happened?”

“While checking the cargo, he was somehow infected by one of the planet seeders and thought not to tell of it. It is likely he gave birth not long after his departure.”

The Engineer at the seat stood and followed his brother over to the sarcophagus and helped him climb inside. David walked around the platform; marveling at the holographic imagery all around him. Weyland tech was untold millions of years older than that of these strange beings, still the holographic capabilities of the Engineers was vastly superior to the best in the business of the current day. And just like that, the entire spectacle disappeared… all but one tiny round holographic planet floating just above the terminal. David walked over and peered curiously at the planet. The continents of North and South America had always been the dead giveaway for the android – this was Earth; the birth world of the Human race. That was where the Engineers had been planning to go before disaster struck.

The entire room was dead again. David walked around and slowly took a more careful look at each sarcophagus. The first two he looked upon had exploded outwardly from the areas where the chest and heads of their inhabiting Engineers would have been. It began to make sense to David all at once. There was an outbreak and the Engineers attempted to go into indefinite hibernation to avoid their entire race from being driven to total extinction. Clearly they had not made it in time. While the synthetic took his time considering everything, he heard an unexpected sound; the whining sound of an Earth canine. He looked over to see one of Fifield’s ‘pups’ hovering aimlessly over one of the sarcophagi… detecting the faint hum of organic life within. David walked quickly past the next set of hole-ridden death chambers and stood before the one that was obviously of interest to Fifield’s little geological toy. The sarcophagus was intact! David knelt and looked along the bottom left side, which he had seen the holographic rendition of the Engineer activate. The buttons glowed with electrical life – the specimen hibernating within was… alive! A broad grin stretched across the synthetic man’s face; he had found what Weyland was looking for! Another yelp came from the floating pup, which banished the joy from David’s face. He scowled at the thing for a moment, and then stepped forward and grabbed it in both hands. The softball-sized robot was hopelessly crushed by the inhuman strength of David. He rushed to exit the chamber and report back to his creator and master.

David, as mentioned, had arrived back at the Prometheus well before the rest of the day’s search team. When Vickers first laid eyes on the returned android, she was tempted to assault him the way she had after David had finished speaking to Peter Weyland from within his cryo-pod. She wanted to deck David for cutting off his video feed just before coming upon the location of the ‘malfunctioning’ probe. But it would have been no use; David would never disclose the secrets that her father had instilled in him. She could not muscle him, even her threats of ‘finding the cord that runs him and cutting it’ had been hollow. Weyland had spent his whole life and most of his fortune for this mission; what could Meredith Vickers, a company stooge whose every accomplishment hinged around her being the daughter of Weyland, do to get in his way? He had planned, schemed and put all of his hopes in the offspring he had created from wires and synthetic tissue – David. She was nothing, and in the grand scheme of all of this; she was as helpless as she was foolish. Worst of all, the synthetic David knew this full well. Any power that Vickers possessed was in no part by her own doing… and none of that power could truly be exercised upon David. So, Vickers merely let the android pass to go to whatever it was Weyland wanted him to do. The android waited in the laboratory as expected for the arrival of the distressed team.

Much to the disappointment of David, there would be no studying the remains of Charles Holloway ; who was burned to a crisp by Vickers. He would very much have wanted to witness the violent cellular change that had taken place in Holloway. David would have simply settled for the tiniest sample of Holloway to work with. But alas, the work of Vickers had been done; as cruelly and artlessly as the mind of the artist herself. In some sick sense, Vickers deserved the tiny victory over David. David had denied Vickers the information given by Weyland, David had denied Vickers a glimpse into the sarcophagus chamber. Vickers could have her win. The android smiled to himself; thinking of a quote from Lawrence of Arabia.

“I’m not hurt at all. Didn’t you know? They can only kill me with a golden bullet.”

 

When Elizabeth Shaw opened her eyes, she was no longer in her environmental suit. She was laying on the table in the ship’s medical facility. Her eyes had not yet focused themselves when she felt a pair of fingers touching the crucifix between her breasts. Shaw’s hands were quickly able to find their way to the hand and prevented her father’s cross from being pulled from her neck.

“My deepest condolences,” Shaw recognized the voice of David, “I am going to have to take this, it may be contaminated.”

“If there’s a contagion, we were all exposed. We need to run blood work on everyone who set foot in that pyramid.”

David smiled blankly at the needless argument. Shaw’s eyesight had just about come into total clearness now.

“Yes, of course,” the android said as Shaw relaxed and allowed him to remove the necklace.

David dropped the necklace into a plastic bag and dropped that bag into one of his pants pockets. He sat down and began calling up information on the screen in front of him.

“I understand how inappropriate this is, given the circumstances… but, as you ordered quarantine fail safes, it is my responsibility to ask. Have you and Dr. Holloway had any intimate contact recently? Since you and he were so close… I just want to be as thorough as possible.”

Before Shaw could muster a response, David’s eyes widened in surprise at the image that had appeared on the computer as the initial body scans concluded.

“My my… you’re pregnant.”

Dr. Shaw shot up to a sitting position.  She looked at the screen that David had turned for her to see for herself. There was something in her abdomen...

“What? That’s… impossible! I can’t be pregnant…”

“Three months by the look of it. Did you and Dr. Holloway… have intercourse?” David asked as though the question legitimately embarrassed him in some way for having asked it.

“Yes, but only ten hours ago. There is no bloody way I’m three months pregnant!”

“Well, doctor… it’s not exactly a traditional fetus,” David offered with a hint of malcontent.

Utter panic set into Elizabeth Shaw. She scrambled from the medical table and grabbed David by both arms.

“I want it out of me!”

“I’m afraid we don’t have the personnel to perform a procedure like that. Our best option…” David was cut off by the panic-stricken Shaw.

“I want it out! David, please get it out of me!”

A dull pain in Shaw’s abdomen grew into a sharp one; she fell to her knees, gripping her stomach with both hands and grunting in agony.

“It must be very painful. Here – let me give you something.”

The android quickly administered a fast-acting sedative that rendered Shaw limp in less than a second. Shaw’s body fell into the strong, capable hands of David; who carefully laid her back on the medical table.

“That’s it, there we go. Someone will be along shortly to bring you back to cryo-deck,” he soothed in a quiet voice.

The android smirked maliciously as he leaned over Shaw; who was quickly fading from consciousness.

“It must feel like your God abandoned you?”

Shaw’s face screwed itself up in confusion and anger.

“What?!”

“To lose Dr. Holloway after your father died under such similar circumstances. What was it that killed him? Ebola?”

The aggressive smile hovered on David’s face as he took in the response of Shaw.

“How… do you know that?” Shaw demanded in little more than a murmur.

“I watched your dreams,” David responded in mechanical matter-of-factness.

 

Though Dr. Shaw had somehow awoken by the sound of the door to the med lab sliding open, she did not move… she did not even open her eyes. A gloved hand lightly slapped her several times on the cheek – a feminine, delicate set of fingers; the fingers of Dr. Ford. Dr. Shaw was not any bigger or tougher than Dr. Ford, but she was confident she could knock Ford out with an unexpected blow to the head. There was always more than enough instrumentation on and around the medical table she lay upon; feigning sleep. Shaw would be able to grab something hard or sharp as soon as she moved into action.

“Dr. Shaw?” The familiar Scottish accent of Ford said to her.

A few more light slaps on Shaw’s face.

“Dr. Shaw? We’re here to put you into an anti-contamination suit. Take you back to cryo-deck and go bed-e-byes.”

Elizabeth Shaw did not move a muscle.

“She’s totally doped,” Ford assured whoever the second person escorting her was, “prepare her.”

At last, Dr. Shaw’s eyes shot open; immediately spotting a large, blunt metal instrument in her haze. Shaw snatched it with one hand and swung the instrument, catching Dr. Ford totally unaware in the back of her skull and sending her sprawled out across the instrument tray beside the examination table. Ford was knocked out cold. Before the man escorting Ford was able to take an offensive or defensive approach, Shaw struck him square in the face; badly injuring the man, but not laying him out the way she did Dr. Ford. He stumbled back, lifting both arms to shield himself dazedly. The second swing from Dr. Shaw caught him square on the left temple – that sent the man down for the count. Shaw dropped the instrument and felt a searing pain in her abdomen. She tried her best not to cry out to loudly. David had been right… this was no ordinary pregnancy. The birth would be just as perversely unordinary – Shaw had to get the thing out of her right away. She stumbled out of the med lab; gritting her teeth as she felt the unwanted fetus moving inside of her. The pain came again; this time even more intensely. In her state of abdominal anguish, an image flashed in Dr. Shaw’s mind – the lavish quarters of Meredith Vickers. The Pauline Med Pod! She knew the layout of the most of the Prometheus rather well. In her pain, Dr. Shaw was still able to quickly navigate herself to the lavish quarters and crawl to the computer monitor and power it on.

“Emergency procedures initiated. Please verbally state the nature of your injury,” a nasal, computerized female voice said.

“I need a cesarean!” Shaw screamed her response.

“Error! This Med Pod is calibrated for male patients only! It does not have the procedure you requested!”

Shaw slid to a standing position and began manually entering a series of symptoms that would essentially remove the horrible fetus from inside of her the same way a cesarean would.

“Surgery… abdominal… penetrating injuries,” Shaw rattled off out loud as she navigated the input console of the Pauline Med Pod, “foreign body… initiate!”

Shaw fell onto her knees as a stabbing pain roared through her abdomen. She blindly reached upon the wheeled metal table and grabbed a trio of injection-ready, plastic syringes of high-dose painkiller. After stripping off the medical gown, with painstaking effort, she climbed into the seven-foot long bed inside of the lucrative machine. Dr. Shaw watched in horror as something stretched her stomach outward. She shot herself with the first dose of anesthetic.

“Surgical procedure beginning. Running diagnostics.”

The diagnostics couldn’t have lasted more than ten seconds, but to Dr. Shaw it felt like light years as she watched her stomach move and turn as if it was about to burst. One of the robotic hands glided in above Shaw and sprayed a dark brown anesthetic across the skin of her stomach.

“Applying anesthetic…”

“COME ON! GET IT OUT!” Shaw screamed at the computer as if her protests would speed the process along.

“Commencing surgical procedure.”

A second mechanical arm glided down from above and a single, tube-like appendage extended itself outward. A thin red laser shot from the tip and the arm began moving slowly; cutting Shaw’s flesh open. Even with the shot of painkiller and the numbing agent applied to Shaw’s stomach, the pain was still unimaginable in scope. It was the kind of pain that chokes back the ability to scream out, even as the body begs for it. Thankfully, the incision was performed with merciful quickness, the hand of metal and plastic that acted as a large set of forceps was far less merciful in its cautious, deliberate spreading of the wound. Shaw remembered readying a second dose of the painkiller should such a situation of pure agony arise as the one she was currently trapped in. Her left hand held uncapped syringe at the ready – Shaw stabbed it into her left thigh. A small measure of relief set in as the physical suffering she felt subsided. Her horror and distress redoubled themselves when she saw that the mechanical hand of the med pod, those unforgiving forceps, in the act of pulling forth the foreign embryo from the gaping wound in Shaw’s stomach. A smaller metal appendage came forth and severed the umbilical cord painlessly. Shaw recoiled at the horrible, purple and pale sack of flesh being held above her. The Pauline Med Pod quickly stitched the wound and sterilized the skin as Shaw watched the embryo quiver into realization. The sack burst; sending a sickening cocktail of alien ooze and bloody fetal tissue spraying everywhere. And there it hung; the child that Dr. Elizabeth Shaw should never have been able to produce. The Trilobite creature looked almost entirely the way a giant squid of the earth’s oceans did… and yet everything about the hideous embryo was an insult to any creature of that simple blue planet. The thing thrashed and squealed in the grip of the mechanical forceps; its first conscious thought was the desire to kill the very mother that had borne it.

 

“COME ON! LET ME OUT!” Shaw screamed as the Med Pod took its time concluding the procedure and letting her the hell out of the glass prison with her unwanted bunk mate.

Shaw had turned her head away from the Trilobite; not just to avoid its touch, but also in total disgust at the mere sight of the thing. Perhaps it had merely been the result of two doses of painkiller, but in one instant where Elizabeth Shaw laid a moment gaze upon the thrashing newborn terror less than a meter from her face, she could have sworn on her life, or what was left of it, that the abominable Trilobite had actually started growing in front of her very eyes! Finally, the glass encasement swung open and Shaw tumbled out. She ignored the ripping, nauseating pain as her body hit the floor. She climbed to her knees and punched in a series of commands that sent the Pauline Med Pod into containment mode. The doors of the lucrative medical device sealed shut once again and the tube filled with white and gray freezing agents. Shaw slumped back down to the floor, breathing through her pain. She had contained the creature. She had done it.