hears, she thinks she hears, movements. The light spins across the room, swiveling and bobbing frantically. Like an indicator of her growing panic. Julie starts a thin, high wailing.

JULIE: Mommy...mommmyyyyy...

Jenna steadies herself, realizing Julie's terror and the child's dependence on her. She plays the beam across the ceiling. Holds on something. Gets an idea. She removes her lighter from a jacket pocket and picks up some papers from the counter. Moving cautiously she boosts Julie up onto the SURGICAL TABLE in the center of the room and clambers up after her.

JULIE: Mommy...I mean, Jenna...I'm scared.
JENNA: I know, honey. Me too.

Jenna lights the papers and holds the flaming mass under the temperature sensor of a fire control system SPRINKLER HEAD. It triggers, spraying the room from several sources with water. An ALARM sounds throughout the complex.

INT. OPERATIONS 144
Breeze jumps at the sound of the alarm, finally identifying its source among the lights flashing on his board. He bolts for the door, yelling into his headset as he moves.

BREEZE: Snowdrift, Zeki, meet me in medical! We got a fire!

INT. OPERATING ROOM 145
Jenna and Julie are drenched as the sprinklers continue to drizzle in the darkness. The SIREN hoots maniacally, masking all other sound. Jenna scans the room with her light, her hair plastered to her face, wiping water out of her eyes. She is eye level with a complex surgical MULTILIGHT. She looks into its tangle of arms and cables, inches away.  Looks away. Her eyes snap back. SOMETHING LEAPS AT HER FACE. She SCREAMS and topples off the table, splashing to the floor. Julie shrieks and scrambles away as Jenna hurls the CHITTERING creature off of her. It slams against a wall of cabinets, clings for a moment, then leaps back as if driven by a steel spring. Jenna scrambles desperately, pulling equipment over on top of herself, clawing across the floor in a frenzy of motion. In a blur of multi-jointed legs the creature scuttles up her body.

She tears at it, but it is incredibly powerful for its size. It moves like lightning toward her head, avoiding her fumbling hands. Julie screams abjectly, backing away, until she is pressed up against a desk in one corner.

Jenna has both hands up, forcing the pulsing body back from her face. The thing's tail whips around her throat and begins to tighten, forcing the underside of its body close to her. Jenna thrashes about, knocking over equipment, sending instruments CLATTERING.  Water streams over her, into her eyes, blinding her and making it impossible to get a grip on the creature's body.

ANGLE ON JULIE as crablike legs appear from behind the desk, right behind her. She sees it and, thinking fast, jams the desk against the wall, pinning the writhing thing. The desk jumps and shudders against all the pressure her tiny body can bring to bear on it. She wails between gritted teeth as the second creature gets one leg free, then another and another. Squeezing itself inexorably onto the desk top...toward her.

The legs of the chitterling thing claw at Jenna's head, getting a surer grip even as she whips her head from side to side. The obscene TUBULE extrudes wetly from the sheath on the creature's underside, forcing itself between the arms she has crossed tightly over her face.

A figure appears at the observation window, a silhouette behind the misted-over glass. A hand wipes a clear spot. Hick's eyes appear. He steps back. WHAM! A burst of pulse-rifle fire shatters the tempered glass. Breeze dives into the crazed spider web pattern and explodes into the room in a shower of fragments. He hits rolling, his armor grinding through the shards, and slides across to Jenna. He gets his fingers around the thrashing legs of the vicious beast and pulls. Between the two of them they force is away from her face, though Jenna is losing strength as the tail tightens sickeningly around her throat. Zeki leaps into the room, flings Julie away from the desk to go skidding across the wet floor, and blasts the second creature against the wall. Point-blank. Acid and smoke. Hahoku appears at Jenna's side and grabs the tail, unwinding its writhing length like a boa constrictor coil from her throat. All of them grip the struggling, SHRIEKING creature.

BREEZE: The corner! Ready?
ZEKI: Do it! Breeze hurls the thing into the corner. It scrabbles upright in an instant and leaps back toward them. WHAM! Zeki gets it clean.

Jenna collapses, gagging. The alarm and sprinklers shut off automatically. Breeze sees the stasis cylinders.

JENNA: (Coughing) Not-much...it was Not-much.

INT. OPERATIONS - ANGLE ON ZEKI 146
looking decidedly stressed-out. He grips his rifle tightly, AIMED RIGHT AT CAMERA.

ZEKI: (Intense) I say we grease this rat-fuck son of a bitch right now!

THE GROUP is gathered around Not-much who sits in a chair, maintaining an icy calm although beads of sweat betray intense concealed tension. Only a few minutes have passes and everyone is still buzzed on adrenaline, as if the whole group is charged with high voltage.

BREEZE: (Pacing) I don't get it. It doesn't make any Goddamn sense.

Jenna stands in front of Not-much, every fiber of her being accusing him with absolute outrage. Not-much tries to break Jenna's stare, which is like a diamond drill. He can't.

JENNA: He wanted an alien, only he couldn't get it back through quarantine. But if we were impregnated...whatever you call it...and then frozen for the trip back at just the right time...then nobody would know about the embryos we were carrying. We and Julie.

Jenna glances at the little girl, a frail figure sitting nearby, hugging her knees and watching the proceedings with somber eyes. She is all but lost in an adult jacket someone has found for her, and her still damp hair is plastered to her forehead and cheeks.

BREEZE: Wait a minute. We'd know about it.
JENNA: The only way it would work is if he sabotaged certain freezers on the trip back. Then he could jettison the bodies and make up any story he liked.
ZEKI: Fuuuck! He's dead. (To Not-much) You're Alien food, pal.
NOT-MUCH: This is total paranoid delusion. It's pitiful.
JENNA: (Wearily) You know, Not-much, I don't know which species is worse. You don't see them screwing each other over for a fucking percentage.
BREEZE: (Serious) Let's waste him. (To Not-much) No offense.

Jenna shakes her head, the rage giving way to a sickened emptiness.

JENNA: Just find someplace to lock him up until it's time to --

THE LIGHTS GO OUT. Everyone stops in the sudden darkness, realizing instinctively it is a new escalation in the struggle. Breeze looks at the board. Everything is out. Doors. Video screens.

JENNA: They cut the power.
ZEKI: What do you mean, they cut the power? How could they cut the power, man? They're animals.

Jenna picks up her rifle and thumbs off the safety.

JENNA: Julie! Stay close. (To the others) Let's get some trackers going. Come on, get moving. Hahoku, watch Not-much.

Zeki and Snowdrift pick up their scanners and move to the door. Snowdrift has to slide it open manually on its track.

INT. CORRIDOR 147
The two troopers separate and move rapidly to the barriers at opposite ends of the control block. DOLLYING WITH SNOWDRIFT as she moves forward with feral steps in the darkness. ON ZEKI scanning the med lab and the nearby barrier.

JENNA: (Voice over) Anything?

BEEP. Zeki's tracker lights up, a faint signal.

ZEKI: There's something.

He pans it around. Back down the corridor. It beep again, louder.

ZEKI: It's inside the complex.
SNOWDRIFT: (Voice over) You're just reading me.
ZEKI: No. No! It ain't you. They're inside. Inside the perimeter. They're in here.
JENNA: Zeki, stay cool. Snowdrift?

ANGLE ON SNOWDRIFT swinging her tracker and rifle together.  She aims it behind her. BEEP.

SNOWDRIFT: (Cool) Zeki may be right.

INT. OPERATIONS 148
Jenna and Breeze share a look..."here we go."

BREEZE: (Low) It's game time.
JENNA: Get back here, both of you. Fall back to Operations.

INT. CORRIDOR 149
Zeki backtracks nervously, peering all around. He looks stretched to the limit.

ZEKI: This signal's weird...must be some interference or something. There's movement all over the place...
JENNA: (Voice over) Just get back here!

Zeki reaches the door to operations at a run, a moment before Snowdrift. They pull the door shut and lock it.

INT. OPERATIONS 150
Zeki joins Jenna and Breeze, who are laying out their armament. Flamethrowers. Grenades. M-41A magazines. Zeki's tracker beeps. Then again. The tone continues through the SCENE, its rhythm increasing.

ZEKI: Movement! Signal's clean.

He pans the scanner. Stops. The range display reads out, counting down.

ZEKI: Range twenty meters.
JENNA: (To Snowdrift) Seal the door.

Snowdrift picks up a hand-welder and moves to comply.

ZEKI: Seventeen meters.
BREEZE: Let's get these things lit.

He hands one flamethrower to Jenna and begins priming the other himself. It lights with a muffled POP. Jenna's lights a moment later. Sparks shower around Snowdrift as she begins welding the door. Zeki's tracker is beeping like mad now, as fast as their hearts.

JENNA: They learned. They cut the power and avoided the guns. They must have found another way in, something we missed.
BREEZE: We didn't miss anything.
ZEKI: Fifteen meters.
JENNA: I don't know, an acid hole in a duct. Something under the floors, not on the plans. I don't know!

She picks up Snowdrift' scanner and aims it the same direction as Zeki's.

ZEKI: Twelve meters. Man, this is a big fucking signal. Ten meters.
JENNA: They're right on us. Snowdrift, how you doing?

Snowdrift is heedlessly showering herself with molten metal as she welds the door shut. Working like a demon.

ZEKI: Nine meters. Eight.
JENNA: Can't be. That's inside the room!
ZEKI: It's reading' right. Look!

Jenna fiddles with her tracker, adjusting the