Excerpt #3 - Unwelcome Awakening (Alien Covenant fan novel)

This is the third excerpt from my Alien: Covenant (Bridge) novel project, which continues the Alien saga and bridges the story of Alien: Covenant (2017) with that of Alien (1979).

The Covenant ship, January 2105

Light wakes up Tennessee, lying in the sleeping pod. He opens his eyes slowly. What happened? Are they already on Origae-6? He feels like he had too much alcohol last night. Something is not right.

“Mo…,” Tennessee tries to ask the main computer only to end the word in a silent wheeze. To his horror, he realizes that he can’t breathe. It’s like having a huge invisible stone on his chest.

Tennessee takes a deep breath, but sharp pain flashes through his body. He feels he needs to cough, but can't get enough air into his lungs. Every attempt to breathe hurts like hell. He resorts to rapid shallow breathing. Wait a second, did something move in his chest?

And the throat! It hurts, as if something big has pushed through it. Even attempting to swallow intensifies the pain. Tennessee starts to shiver, he feels the first beads of sweat on his body. Despite the pain, he manages to lift his head a bit. A big, smudged vessel of biological liquid next to his pod catches his attention. What the fuck happened here?

Before laying his head on the pod’s soft interior, Tennessee at least rips off the sleeping fabric on his head. When removing it, additional pain almost pushes tears from his eyes. He feels like somebody tried to suffocate him, squeezing his neck with their hands. He realizes there is a strange, resin-like liquid on his fingers.

Tennessee lies in the pod, shivering, wheezing, and sweating, desperately trying to remember the last events. He definitely jumped to the sleeping pod in the bay area, not here, in this room with its strange setting. He coughs a bit and feels liquid in his mouth. Tennessee inserts two fingers there to inspect it. He looks at them wide-eyed. Why does he have blood in his mouth?

Tennessee can’t just lie there, he needs to leave this uncanny place to find help. Despite the pain, he turns to the left a bit, catching the pod's edge with his right hand. Again! Something has moved in his chest. Tennessee lifts himself with both hands to crawl over the pod’s edge. His body is strangely heavy and clumsy, sweating everywhere. If I could at least breathe normally, Tennessee begs in his mind.

No chance. Moreover, the lack of air makes him lightheaded. When crawling over the edge, Tennessee falls from the pod on his left hand, overturning the container with his legs. The vessel falls on the floor with a loud thud. The pain is unbearable now, he must have broken his left wrist. Tears flow from his eyes now.

He wants to scream in pain, but he doesn’t have enough air in his lungs. Wheezing heavily, Tennessee moves himself from lying on the floor to a sitting position. It takes so much effort! But at least, he sits now, leaning on the pod, holding his left hand with the right one. The biological liquid, spreading on the floor, has already reached his leg. Tennessee feels it on his right calf. The heavy sweating deepens the overall discomfort.

A dead face-hugger’s husk lying nearby catches his attention. Tennessee stares at it blankly, the husk is somehow familiar to him. He tries to remember, but the intensity of pain prevents him from focusing his mind.

Tennessee coughs again and blood stains his white sleeping clothes. His heart pounds heavily when he looks at the red splotch there. The strange activity in his chest intensifies, causing him to cough even more. The maddening pain bends his upper body to an unnatural position. Tennessee slips to lying again, and his mouth starts to fill with even more blood. Something inside of him tries to get away, making Tennessee keep jerking on the floor. Unable to breathe, he blacks out in a few seconds, with his eyes rolling up.

But the heavy shaking of his body continues. A big, bloody strain speck appears on Tennessee's chest as the xenomorph pushes through aggressively. With its head already sticking out, the creature shrieks and finishes its escape from Tennessee's corpse, releasing even more blood.

The newly born beast washes itself from Tennessee to a growing pool of blood on the floor. The Alien stands up slowly and shakes itself like a dog emerging from the water. It stretches its arms and shrieks, ejecting tiny internal jaws. Afterwards, it jumps onto Tennessee's body and starts devouring him eagerly, beginning with his face.

You will find more information about this project (Alien Covenant fan novel) in my blog post.