Darkness. He struggled to see anything as his captor held him tight, but he had the impression they were moving at considerable speed. Flying through narrow vents and cramped tunnels, he was half-carried, half-dragged as the xenomorph clutched him to its torso. It was warm. Surprisingly so. Its chitinous exterior as warm as human skin.

  The air temperature had shifted. Climbing rapidly in just the last few minutes, it was now sweltering. The sound of claws on metal grating had been replaced by the sound of dripping moisture. Warm, wet and cloying, it had already saturated his clothes through to the skin, and the air was heavy with the smell of decay and ammonia. Yau knew exactly where he was, and what fate lay in store for him. But still, he was more fascinated than afraid. He had made the study of XX121 his life’s work, yet he had never been so close to a living adult xenomorph as he was now.

  A sudden dizzying sense of vertigo made him feel they had emerged into a much larger chamber, and the world spun as they descended towards the floor. The xenomorph climbing down the wall head first as it carried him, moving across the caked-on layers of salivatory cement with ease. He collapsed to his hands and knees as he was, with apparent care, deposited on to the wet floor. Coughing, his aging joints protested as he rocked back on his heels. Closing his eyes and focusing on his breathing as the nauseating disorientation faded.

  Opening his eyes, it still took him a moment to realise what he was looking at. Fleshy, round, mucus covered objects. Each almost as tall as he was in his kneeling state. Eggs. A couple of dozen at least. Surrounding him on all sides. An immense, pulsing physogastric sac, suspended by thick ropey tendrils of hive material, stretched across the chamber. Its ovipositor extending to lay another fresh egg on the floor, and perched at the head of the sac, motionless, sat a mass of jet-black chitin.

  The queen.

  She was glorious. Already far larger than any drone he had ever seen, he estimated her to be perhaps three quarters grown. Her massive, broad black crest moved, tilting backwards as her head extended from the carapace, and seeming to fixate on the offering that knelt before her. She let out a long, low hiss, and Yau felt the presence of the looming drone behind him slowly back away.

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  The chamber fell silent. The eggs remained unmoving. Uninterested in the potential host mere feet from them. There was no cocoon. No impregnation. He had been brought before the queen, because she had deemed it be so. He had been granted a royal audience. He stared up at her in awe. Pure fascination overwhelming any thought of fear. Her massive head tilting as she appeared to study him with alien intelligence. Did she recognise him? Individual drones did not recognise human faces, but did she? Is that why he had been spared?

  “Father,” he said quietly, placing one hand on his chest.

  The queen lowered her head. Leaning forward and reaching down with her main arms, she wrapped her long, taloned fingers around his torso. Effortlessly lifting him almost four metres to her head level. She could have torn him limb from limb, or crushed him like an egg. The power radiated through her like a current, yet the movement was gentle. Like a loving parent holding up an infant. His eyes burning slightly as her soft, steady breaths washed over his face.

  “Father,” he said again, more clearly this time as he repeated the gesture.

  She brought him even closer. Touching her forehead to his in an almost intimate gesture. Gently nuzzling him. His mind raced. He had never even heard of such mammalian-like behaviour. Imprinting. Affection. Obedience. The possibilities were endless…

  Hiss.

  The queen let out a low, sharp sound as her breathing quickened.

  Hiss.

  The sound came again, louder this time. More guttural. A deep, predatory snarl that cut through his scientific detachment like a scalpel. Her grip tightened. Too tight. His bones groaning under the pressure as he struggled to breathe. The queen seized his ankles with her secondary forelimbs, threatening to pull his legs from their sockets as her lips pulled back, exposing glistening, translucent blades. She squeezed tighter, and he tried to scream as his bones cracked, but all that came was a soundless, bloody cough. Her mouth opened wide. Impossibly wide. Her queen-sized pharyngeal jaws shaking with rage as saliva poured profusely from her open maw, she lunged forward.