Alien³

INT. ENTRANCE – OUTSIDE LAB

BISHOP

We have three minutes at the outside.

HICKS

Go.

Bishop punches the code-sequence and the door hisses open; they're through, moving.

INT. TISSUE CULTURE LAB

They move down the row of stasis tubes. Bishop pauses when they reach the two units with missing tubes, then quickly moves on. He opens a wall panel, exposing controls and a large, very serious-looking red switch. Label above switch:

STASIS SYSTEM MICROWAVE STERILIZATION

Then, he hesitates. Turning slowly, as if under compulsion, he looks back; the line of glowing tubes.

HICKS

Do it!

And still he doesn't move... Hicks darts his arm past Bishop, breaking the trance and yanking the red switch.

A burst of unpleasant high-frequency SOUND as the fluid in the tubes instantly begins to boil.

CLOSE ON ONE OF THE ALIEN CULTURES

As it bursts, disintegrates into a film of slime lost behind a storm of bubbles. The lab's ALARM system goes off. The doors slide open as three MARINES cover Hicks and Bishop with handguns.

MARINES

Just don't you fucking move, Jack.

Hicks stonefaces the Marines. Then cracks a grin.

INT. DETENTION UNIT

Hicks and Bishop, in white plastic "medical restraints" (like arm and leg-irons) precede the grim-faced Marines along a corridor and are thrown into separate cells.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. THE BUBBLE

Meeting of Anchorpoint's full directorate, including Welles and Fox, Jackson, and a number of new faces. Welles is white-lipped with fury.

JACKSON

They knew the code, didn't they? The code for the door...

FOX

You got it, Ops. And they knew just where to go which button to push to poach our eggs for us, didn't they? Struggling with an idea, Ops? Think it may even have been an inside job?

JACKSON

You're a Grade A Company prick, aren't you, mister?

Her bitch truckdriver side; a tough lady, used to taking a lot of life-or-death responsibility in her job.

WELLES

The Anchorpoint phase of the project is terminated, Rosetti. You'll keep Hicks and the android in solitary until they can return with us to Gateway to stand trial for treason.

TRENT

The Anchorpoint phase? What do you mean? We have no more material to work with...

FOX

You have no more material to work with, Trent. In any case, it's become obvious that you aren't quiet the man for the job. We took the precaution of obtaining our own samples. They're on their way to Gateway.

WELLES

(with cold satisfaction)

... and everything, every move each of you have made, since our arrival, is going to be gone over with a fine toothed c-c-c-c–

As Welles begins to stammer, her eyes betray a terrible consternation. She rises from her chair, lurches forward, catching herself on her hands. The C-C-C-C-C phases into a chattering palsy as a thick strand of blood-streaked drool descends toward the table. Fox, seated to her left, has instinctively shoved his own chair back, ready to run. Everyone else is frozen with shock.

As the chittering tooth-burr becomes a shrill SHRIEK of inhuman rage, the transformation takes place. Segmented biomechanoid tendons squirm beneath the skin of her arms. Her hands claw at one another, tearing redundant flesh from alien talons. Then the shriek dies. She straightens up.

And, rips her face apart in a single movement, the glistening claws coming away with skin, eyes, muscle, teeth, and splinters of bone... SOUND of ripping cloth. The New Beast sheds its human skin in a single sinuous, bloody ripple, molting on fast forward.

An instant of utter silence as the featureless mask moves. From side to side. Scanning.

Trent vomits explosively. The Marine guard snatches his pistol from ist holster and FIRES wildly across the table. Blind screaming chaos.

OVERHEAD SHOT

As the directorate plunges, like a single panicked organism, to the far side of the bubble. The thing is on Fox before he can get up from his chair.

CLOSE

On his scream as the sucking, fanged tongue plunges through the orbit of his eye.

ANGLE

A Marine with a flamethrower bursts through the door, torching Fox and the New Beast, setting fire to the bubble's acoustic foam baffles.

INT. CORRIDOR OUTSIDE TULLY'S SLEEPING CUBICLE

Spence is coming down the corridor, carrying a clear plastic bag of styrofoam food containers. Nobody else in sight. She look tired, but not particularly worried. She reaches the door to his cubicle. Thumps on it with the heal of her hand.

SPENCE

Tully! Hey! Open up.. Got you some food...

No reply. She thumps again, then punches the combination (the lock look like a telephone key-pad). Door opens. Dark inside.

SPENCE

(continuing)

Tully? You sleeping?

She climbs in. Dark. Very. A red LED glows on the phone console. She crawls through the detritus of Tully's housekeeping and fumbles with the lights. Can't find the switch.

SPENCE

Tully?

Lights CLICK on. Nobody there. Nothing. Looks even messier then she last saw it. She sighs, puts the bag of food on a ledge, scoops up a mound of dirty cloths off the pillow in an automatic cleaning-up gesture. And sees Tully's lab badge. Picks it up.

CLOSE ON THE BADGE

The contamination indicator strip is red.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. DETENTION CELL

Hicks sitting on the narrow bunk.

Door opens. One of the Marines who arrested his in the lab; he wears combat armor now.

HICKS

What's your problem, bud? Got a war on?

The Marine steps back, admitting a haggard Rosetti.

ROSETTI

Get up, Hicks. We need you in the Ops Room.

HICKS

We didn't kill it.

ROSETTI

No. It killed Fox and Welles...

INT. TUNNEL, CONSTRUCTION ZONE

Small vehicle WHINES TOWARD US through puddles of condensation: a skeletal electric motor-jeep with heavy roll bars, scratched and paint-scarred. Walker driving. Hick behind him in partial combat armor and communication rig, cradling a pulse-rifle.

Walker is pushing it, driving fast; the jeep bounces and sways, skitters around a corner. Into the gloom of the big construction chamber. Halts.

HICKS

(into mouthpiece)

Gimme a read.

JACKSON (V.O.)

(from headset)

You're close. Hang a left.

HICKS

Is he moving?

JACKSON

No...

Walker swing the jeep around and they roll toward a narrow gap between massive stacks of geodesic struts.

INT. OPS ROOM

Jackson studies a simulator screen; a moving cursor, the Jeep, navigates a 3D grid-representation of the construction zone.

JACKSON

No left again.

The cursor turns. Nears a blinking red dot.

Spence, drawn and anxious, looks over Jackson's shoulder. Bishop and Rosetti are beside her.

SPENCE

You're sure it's him?

JACKSON

It's his locator frequency, isn't it? No two alike. Surgically implanted. Just like yours...

SPENCE

(gnaws at her lip)

He's not moving...

ROSETTI

Why would he go down there?

BISHOP

The badge. He knew that he's been infected...

SPENCE

Scared. He's scared.

(shudders)

Tully...

INT. CONSTRUCTION CHAMBER

Dark. The Jeep creeps along between stacks of prefab hull units, emerges into a open space, junctions of several corridors. The deck is an inch deep in water.

JACKSON (V.O.)

He's there! You're right on top of him!

Walker stops the jeep. Hicks stands up, plays the beam of a flashlight around the area. Presses the mute button on his headset.

HICKS

(bellows)

Tully! Tully! Yo!

ECHO. DRIP of water.

Hicks clips the flashlight beneath the barrel of his gun and jumps down. Reflections ripple as he moves forward. Swings the beam along the surface – something there... The logo-patches down a sleeve of Tully's ruptured, blood-soaked leather jacket. Drifting shred of human tissue...

JACKSON (V.O.)

Can you see him?

HICKS

Yeah.

And the thing that was Tully launches itself from the top of one of the stacks of construction material. Lands on top of the jeep, going for Walker, through the roll bars.

CLOSEUP ON JAWS

As the thing's tail lashes past Walker's face, taking a nick out of a steel bar.

On the controls, a pair of levers: he yanks one back, shoves the other forward, thumbs both drive buttons simultaneously.

ANGLE

The jeep (separate drive-trains for each wheel) pulls two three-sixties on a dime, hurling the thing toward Hicks. It smashes into the desk, splash of water, leaps for Hicks instantly. The charge from his pulse-rifle takes it in mid-air, hideous bile-yellow spurt of acid... And it hits the water again with a terrific EXPLOSION of steam. The jeep lurches out through the steam, engines SCREAMING, wheels losing traction through the puddle, throwing up fantails of water, nearly overturning. Hicks jumps, snags a roll bar, empties the pulse-rifle's clip into the steam on full-auto as Walker hauls ass back down the corridor...

JACKSON (V.O.)

Hicks! What's happening?

INT. OPS ROOM

JACKSON

Hicks? Hicks!

CLOSE ON SCREEN

As the jeep-cursor speeds away from Tully's blinking locator-dot.

Spence's eyes fixed on the screen as she makes a serious stab at swallowing her own fist.

DISSOLVE TO:

INT. RODINA – BIOLAB

VERY SLOW PAN past monitors – one flickering like a defective strobe, the other displaying a readout in Russian – past an overturned mug on a keyboard, past assorted equipment, past the shattered ruin of the big stasis tube, to Suslov and Braun cocooned in a glittering biomech structure of alien resin. Braun is dead, his rib cage gaping.

SCREAMS and the HAMMER of automatic weapons. Station crew fleeing in panic enter through one door, crash into tables, scattering trays of food, claw at one another to escape through another door. The Vietnamese commando and her partner are last into the room; they spin in unison and FIRE back through the door. SOUND of rending metal and loud inhuman RAGE.

The commandos scramble for the far door as the alien crashes into the mess: a new form, the result of Suslov's genetic tinkering. Bigger. Meaner. Faster. Able to reproduce more quickly.

The frantic crew are climbing a ladder. The commandos start up the ladder. They climb through a circular hatch. Like the deck they stand on, the hatch is made of heavy steel expansion-grid. The alien swarms up the ladder, slams into the hatch just as the commandos close and lock it. The alien keeps on slamming. The steel begins to bulge and tear...

INT. ANCHORPOINT – OPS ROOM

Hicks, Bishop, Rosetti, Shuman, and Jackson.

JACKSON

Cant's raise 'em, boss.

SHUMAN

Try the diplomatic codes...

JACKSON

Diplomatic codes? They aren't responding to Mayday International. Maybe they've got a transponder down, but – hey, check this, outgoing traffic...

(she bobs her head, taps her lapboard)

It's a squirt transmission... Military decryption standard.

ROSETTI

What do they have in the area?

JACKSON

(taps up a fresh screen of data)

Not much. Automated mining system working NC-313... Test module for a terraforming operation enroute MV-45... And, here we go, the battle cruiser Nikolai Stoiko. Nine hours from Rodina if they push it.

HICKS

What I wanna know is, what do we have in the area?

JACKSON

(another screen of data)

Not much. How about the Kansas City, Colonel Admin transport? We hit her with a mayday, she'll get here inside twenty hours.

HICKS

Then what?

ROSETTI

We abandon the station.

HICKS

Destroy the station, man! We got nukes?

ROSETTI

Outlawed under the Strategic Arms Reduction treaty.

JACKSON

We can fiddle the overrides on the fusion package. Baby nova.

BISHOP

We're dealing with a new form, Colonel. We know nothing of this new mode of reproduction. Others may have already become hosts...

ROSETTI

What are you suggesting?

BISHOP

In order to be entirely certain, Colonel, it would be necessary to override the fusion package now.

Jackson looks up at Bishop; he's suggesting mass suicide.

HICKS

I thought you were programmed to protect human life?

BISHOP

(with android blandness)

I'm taking the long view.

Jackson's console CHIMES, begins to display new data, ID shots of three crew members.

JACKSON

Missing persons.

(she taps her way through windows of data)

Two were members of the clean-up crew who did the lab after the blowout. Third doesn't check... No, wait. Lives with one of the first two.. But that makes a total of fifteen... Something's happening...

HICKS

Goddamn, Rosetti, it's catching!

ROSETTI

(ignores him)

Mayday Kansas City, Jackson.

HICKS

What about Sulaco?

SHUMAN

It would take two days to raise her.

HICKS

(bitterly)

With that shit on board.

ROSETTI

Gateway will have our warning before Sulaco arrives.

SHUMAN

Fine, Colonel. And who do you suppose will be willing to take it seriously? Weapons Division?

JACKSON

Hey, I'm getting something! The socialist space brothers speak at last...

Her main screen flickers and jumps; the speakers hill with a roar of STATIC –
 

JACKSON

(continuing)

Their transmission standards get worse all the –

She falls silent as the screen clear, revealing a young Slavic madwoman – one of Suslov's lab assistants – in blood-drenched coveralls. Jerky handheld video, grainy transmission, indistinct background. She clutches a sheet of paper, reads aloud from it in a foreign language.

SHUMAN

Get a translation program on line, Jackson!

Jackson's already punching. An instantaneous computer translation cuts in as V.O.; the girl's lips move, out of sync, like a cheap dub; the transmission is rendered in flat synthi-voice.

CLOSEUP ON SCREEN

SPOKESWOMAN

... of Progressive Peoples. Technician First Class, Tatjana Malik. Please, we wish to inform you: we have undertaken an experiment with genetic material obtained from the military transport vessel... We attempted to clone the xenomorph in stasis. Failure of the stasis system occurred in the fifteenth hour... Attempted modification of the genetic structure has resulted in a variant which replicates rapidly, more

rapidly...

(and here, horribly, she smiles)

It has... taken... most of us. Those of us who remain... We wish to warn you: you must terminate any experiment with the material now. It is impossible. It cannot be contained. There is no –

The image flickers, vanishes.

ANGLE

JACKSON

Lost 'em. That's it... Goddamnit, she was just a tech. Their brass didn't bother...