Alien³

FOX

Of course. "Cancer research"...

INT. MEDLAB – SCAN UNIT

Bishop patiently undergoes a scan; he lies on his back on a narrow support as a massive donut-shaped sensor moves down the length of his body. A life-size color scan-image is displayed on a large screen: his "organs."

TECHNICIAN

The knees. Looks like they do the joints in polycarbon...

MEDIC

How about it, Bishop? Knees okay?

BISHOP

Yes...

Tentative smile.

TECHNICIANS

Polycarbon. Won't hold up worth a damn...

INT. RODINA – BIOLAB

Smaller than the Anchorpoint lab. Equipment look less advanced. The only light is the yellowish glow from a stasis tube; Braun and two assistants are clustered around the tube, observing the thing suspended there: thumb-sized, grayish-pink. An embryo.

INT. ANCHORPOINT – A TUNNEL AT THE EDGE OF THE CONSTRUCTION ZONE

Hicks jogs through the tunnel. Its brightly-lit arc of white ceramic recalls London tube stations, but the floor is paved smooth and black, with freshly-painted traffic symbols. He passes a woman jogging in the opposite direction, keeps going. Small video cameras are mounted at intervals overhead, panning slowly form side to side. As he continues, less of the tunnel is finished; sections of tile are missing, revealing pipes, wiring, structural steel. Past a certain point he's jogging the raw steel tube, splashing through shallow puddles of condensation. Fewer lights, widely spaced. He reaches a junction and pauses, chooses a tunnel.

INT. CONSTRUCTION ZONE CHAMBER – HIGH, LONG SHOT – HICKS

Comes out of the lit mouth of a tunnel. The space he enters is the size of a football stadium, but dark and industrially Gothic. Stacks of hull-plate and geodesic struts. A shower of sparks as he passes a robot welder (a la the machine in the opening sequence of "Aliens"). Down the aisle of material and heavy machinery. Spence is waiting.

SPENCE

Hicks.

She's in the shadows, smoking a cigarette.

HICKS

You, huh? Why you?

SPENCE

I work in the lab with Tully. He couldn't make it.

HICKS

Hangover?

SPENCE

Sacred... That forfeit agreement he had to sign.

HICKS

Doesn't scare you?

SPENCE

I haven't signed. Not yet. They've only given them to the ones who saw what happened.

HICKS

Why you?

SPENCE

Tully's okay, Hicks. I know him. Believe it or not, he doesn't scare that easy. He told me what was on that ship, Hicks. What he saw. You know what is was.

HICKS

I don't think anybody knows what it is...

SPENCE

They've got us growing the stuff. We've been running recombinant DNA routines on it, using human genetic material...

HICKS

You've been what?

SPENCE

(stubbing out her cigarette)

Cancer research. Tully says that's just a cover. Says it's like trying to cure cancer with a shotgun. Anyway, everybody know those two spooks from Gateway are MiliSci...

HICKS

Fox and Welles?

SPENCE

Weapons Division. Not even supposed to exist, these days. Not officially, anyway.

HICKS

(lights a cigarette of his own)

I still don't see why you're telling me this.

SPENCE

Maybe I don't either. It's just... we've got to tell somebody... Now there's a rumor somebody came in on a U.P.P. ship today, somebody off Sulaco...

HICKS

Bishop...

SPENCE

I don't know.

HICKS

Maybe Progressive Peoples'll get their own Alien too. Maybe they'll grow some...

SPENCE

(horrified)

Shit! You'd better hope not...

HICKS

Why's that?

SPENCE

Their lab gear's five years behind ours. They'd never be able to control it.

HICKS

Think you can, huh?

SPENCE

I don't know...

INT. OPS ROOM

A BLEEP as Tully appears on one of Jackson's screens, looking up at a camera in the tissue culture lab.

TULLY

Get me some maintenance people down here, will ya? Run a check on the stasis system. Pressure differential's off and the read keep fluctuating. And punch it Priority One; Trent'll cover it.

JACKSON

(with a characteristic little jerk of her head, light-pen winking)

Sure. You want a piece of the Superbowl, Tully?

TULLY

Nah.

JACKSON

Denver...

TULLY

Denver? No way. Gimme a tenth on Chicago.

INT. RODINA – BIOLAB

Braun is seated at a computer, entering data. Suslov is staring into the stasis tube containing the developing Alien.

SUSLOV

There's an irony in this...

BRAUN

(engrossed in the data)

Irony, Colonel-Doctor?

SUSLOV

The readiness with which it lends itself to genetic manipulation, Braun. The speed with which its cells multiply.

BRAUN

Yes. Remarkable.

SUSLOV

As though the gene-structure had been designed for ease of manipulation. And this apparently universal compatibility with other plasms...

BRAUN

(reluctantly abandoning his task)

And you find this ironic?

SUSLOV
Ironic that we are attempting to program it as a weapon, yes.

BRAUN

How is that?

SUSLOV

Perhaps it is the fruit of some ancient experiment... A living artifact, the product of genetic engineering... A weapon. Perhaps we are looking at the end result of yet another arms race...

BRAUN

A defeatist attitude, Colonel-Doctor. Our project can only strengthen the Union of Progressive Peoples...

CLOSE – THE STASIS TUBE – A CHEST-BURSTER
 

Is suspended there like an eyeless fetal dolphin.

INT. MACHINE SHOP
 

Hicks, alone in the shop, mechanically going through the motions of the busywork he's been assigned to keep him out of the way.

BISHOP

(from the doorway)

That's quite a piece of machinery, Corporal Hicks...

HICKS

(looking up, grinning)

That's what we used to say about you. How the hell are you, Bishop? Brass said you were snatched by the U.P.P. How're things in the socialist paradise?

BISHOP
I was returned. I assume they had no further use for me.

He moves among the silent machines, touching them as he speaks.

BISHOP
(continuing)

There are rumors, Hicks, that Weapons Division intends to develop the Alien.

HICKS

(with a glance at the video camera on the wall)

Where'd the bastards get one, Bishop?

BISHOP

One of them managed to board Sulaco, Hicks. Ripley killed it...

HICKS

Good for her.

BISHOP

She called it "the queen."  It was larger than the others. Very large. Somehow is deposited genetic material in the ship.

HICKS

Then they're stone cold crazy, man. I hear the U.P.P. might try it themselves.

BISHOP

Given the current state of the arms race, it's entirely possible. I'm programmed to protect human life, Hicks. It's my... nature. Everything I am, everything I know, tells me this experiment must be aborted.

HICKS

Yeah. I know the feeling.

BISHOP

But I can't be entirely sure you can trust me, Hicks.

HICKS

You can't what?

BISHOP
The U.P.P. may have reprogrammed me. I've been very thoroughly examined, of course, but the possibility does exist.

HICKS

Wouldn't you know?

BISHOP

No. I may be functioning as an enemy agent.

HICKS

(beat)

What the hell. We have to kill it, don't we?

BISHOP

I have to try.

HICKS

I'm in man. And I think I know where we can find us a little help...

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. TISSUE LAB
 

Spence and Tully are alone.

SPENCE
What coffee? I'm going to the machine.

TULLY

No.

He peers into one of the stasis tubes; a small ovoid of tissue suspended there.

SPENCE
Maintenance cure your pressure differential problem?

TULLY

Said there wasn't any. Said it was a glitch.

SPENCE

Didn't want to get his hands dirty?

TULLY

It settled down by itself.

Spence exits; Tully moves closer to the tube.

CLOSE – THE SINGLE DEVELOPING SPORE
 

Inside; it looks like a much smaller version of the alien egg.

WIDER ANGLE
 

TULLY
Hey there. Hi ya. How ya doin'? Nutrient solution agreeing with you, hm? We're looking lots bigger today, aren't we? You bet. Terrific. Just absolutely fucking wonderful...

His monologue is interrupted by Welles' entrance; he's startled, looks up guiltily. The heavy glass doors HISS shut behind her.

WELLES

Communing with nature, Tully?

TULLY

Your not wearing a badge.

(taps the plastic ID clipped to his lab coat)

White strap registers contamination. Turns red if you're accidentally exposed to something. Got it?

WELLES
Where's Trent?

TULLY

Lunch.

WELLES

And how's our friend?

She moves to the stasis tube, looks in.

TULLY
Friends. Our little friends. Growing.

WELLES

Get me hard copy for the past six hours.

TULLY

Sorry. Ask Trent.

WELLES

I don't think you understood me, Technician Tully...

She's following him as he nears the main computer console; in the b.g., a stasis tube begins to HISS. CRACKS loudly, a hairline fracture emits a superfine spray of fluid. An alarm SOUNDS. 

WELLES

(continuing)

What does th –

TULLY
O Jesus...

Two of the tubes BLOW OUT. Nutrient fluid and plastic shards everywhere. Welles and Tully go down. A louder ALARM cuts in; red lights strobe. Locks in the doors THUNK shut, an automatic containment measure, as Spence, outside, throws down her coffee and begins to struggle with the door-controls, trying to reach Tully. Tully, facedown in a pool of the fluid, see that he's nine inches away from the gray pigeon's-egg of alien tissue. His eyes widen. Gets to his knees as carefully as he can. Reaches slowly – slowly – sideways, manages to snag a pair of plastic tongs and a shallow lab tray from the counter...

Welles tries to scramble to her feet, loses her balance in the slippery goop, and snatches at his arm. He nearly falls on top of the thing, but cuffs her roughly away, kneels, tongs poised... Beat. A tiny orifice opens; for a split-second something glitters above the thing, a faint, fist-sized cloud of dark mist. Then it's gone and Tully's moving, swooping in with tongs and tray.

SPENCE (V.O.)

(intercom)

Tully! Tully, Goddamn it! What's happening? Are you okay?

TULLY

De-con. Get us down to De-con!

Welles is struggling to her feet.

INT. DECONTAMINATION CHAMBER
 

Drenched, naked, furious, Welles is nearly invisible behind a scalding downpour as techs in biohazard gear scrub her down with detergents and antibacterial agents. She shoots eye-daggers at Tully, who's being worked over by two more techs.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. OPS ROOM
 

Jackson at work. PAN ACROSS screens to security camera view of the DNA lab, clean now but minus two stasis tubes – image identified: "TISSUE CULTURE / 25 AUGUST / 1900:15 HOURS". Jackson's attention is elsewhere.

INT. A CORRIDOR
 

Hicks keeps watch as Bishop open a panel, exposing complex wiring; no hesitation whatever as he strips two wires, removes a Walkman-sized VCR from his belt, and clips lead to the stripped wires.

INT. OPS ROOM
 

CLOSE on monitor image of the lab. The picture fuzzes out, scrambles, returns – but now reads: "TISSUE CULTURE / 23 AUGUST / 1200:02 HOURS" and the missing tubes are back in place.