This is the Way the World Ends

Summary: Essentially the same as the teaser summary-- Call and Ripley are alone on a ship. Call is disturbed and intrigued...Ripley is...well, Ripley.

Warnings: Femslash with a little violence. Nothing terribly graphic or offensive, provided you like that sort of thing.

Notes: This was written a few years ago for a friend, and I thought it was good enough to share. It has not been read by a beta, and mainly exists for my amusement, hopefully yours.

Reviews are much appreciated, but constructive criticism is not really needed, since this story was finished long ago.

Names, in italics, indicate general character perspective. There aren't too many of those, however.

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Call.

The gun discharged with a cold, sterile sound, echoing down hallways of grim metal and grime-covered bolts to resonate in distant dark. The strange eyes of whatever had become Ellen Ripley, number eight, did not follow the path of the bullet as if flew into the soft red meat of Johner's left pectoral muscle. It squelched in the flesh, and sank. He choked thickly, slipping to the floor with a clouded thud.

Ripley smiled darkly as he struck the metal plates, not even glancing away from the pallid face of the horrified android. Her tone was reptilian and patient. "They're all gone, now, Call. It's just me and you." She dropped the gun onto the floor of the corridor, and it clattered noisily. Annalee Call looked up, her lips twitching in confusion and fear. Were they really dead? Was she really alone with this thing, this monster that could kill so easily, kill her crewmates without the slightest glimmer of feeling in her terrible eyes, without regret or even hatred?

True, the monster had more human blood inside her veins than had the android. The fact that Call was sickened at the sight of death was only a sign of how well she had been programmed. She had no feelings of her own, no more than the black gun that lay, clammy with cooling blood, at Ripley's booted feet, and this disgusted her as well. Ironic, the perfect machine that rages against itself perpetually.

"You fucking bitch, Ripley! How can you do this?!" Call shrieked, lunging at the much larger woman and striking her forcefully across the face with the back of her knuckles. Ripley turned her head away with inhuman ease, and Call lost her balance on the slippery floor, falling to her knees with a painful sound. She looked up to see that Ripley was still smiling, but that now her mouth was seeping a tiny thread of red that slithered over her angular jaw. A drop of her alien blood fell on Call's white cheek, burning. She whimpered in pain and stumbled backwards to her feet, trying to claw the stinging substance off of her wounded face.

Ripley's fingers, as cold and as inescapable as metal cables, wrapped around the android's left wrist and dragged her roughly to her feet. "I should think you would know that, Call," she whispered softly, her breath tickling Call's ear. Call cursed loudly and kicked as Ripley pinned her to the wall, her hard black nails beginning to sink into Call's artificial tissues. It hurt terribly where it broke the skin, a pain like being gnawed by a venomous spider, for Ripley's body was full of awful things that burned and stung and bit. And right now, her nails were slick with her own corrosive blood, which Call had drawn from her mouth with her impetuous strike.

For a few minutes, Ripley seemed content to stroke the android's delicate face and the short dark locks that fell around it, thoughtful and methodical, ever the learned savage. Call stared wide-eyed at her, apprehensive and angry, and tried very hard not to hear the awful sounds the captain's woman made as she suffocated in her own blood six metres away.

Against her will, Call felt her eyes begin to fill with the saline fluid that served her as tears. Most of her shipmates had not been among her closest friends, but her program did not allow her to endure their expiring as calmly as Ripley could. Perhaps it was envy, or awe of life, that made her hurt so badly to see death all around her, wet and red and human. Ripley was very much alive, but she seemed not to care at all for anything, one way or another.

"Why me, Ripley," Call asked numbly, struggling to meet the gaze of the taller woman. Ripley graced her with a predatory grin, snapping her teeth together with a click that might have frozen Call's blood, had she had any blood. "Why did you kill them, and keep me alive?"

Ripley's dark hair fell in front of her eyes as she smelled the android's throat. Call smelled of many things, like engine oil and silicone, but also of water and the perfume of detergents. Ripley could smell the ingenious chemical they'd used as adrenalin, burning in the little artificial canals, beneath the soft, pale latex of her synthetic skin. In humans, this scent could be associated with either extreme fear, or extreme arousal. Call was most likely very afraid, and this aroused Ripley, she discovered, very much. She enjoyed the duality of nature. The ferocity of her countenance betrayed her, and Call cringed in sudden fear, feeling an instinctual-- if such a being could be said to possess instinct-- terror at the sight of the demon in Ripley's eyes, grinning out at her like a dark god from the stars.

As the android had become quite still, Ripley continued to toy with her hair and face, tasting her skin with a dark red tongue that made the machine shiver and recoil.

"Does it hurt?"

Call looked at Ripley, hatred burning in her eyes, and carefully spat out the words. "No. It does not hurt." There, Call thought, perhaps she'd stop now, now that she knew she wasn't causing any pain. Would she look elsewhere, to see what would draw screams from her false lips? To see if an unreal human being could be made to feel real pain?

Ripley did not stop. Instead, she continued to lap at Call's throat, like a curious serpent, and then to bite her, experimentally at first, and then with more strength.

Call's hand, clenched into a white-knuckled knot in the fabric of her navy-blue coveralls, tightened until she could hear her tendons creaking through her bones. "Goddamn it, Ripley! What the fuck are you doing?"

Ripley lifted Call up and slammed her harder against the wall, cocking her head like a bird listening for a worm, or as if she were using her eyes as a drill to screw something into Call's face. "Whatever the fuck I want," Ripley responded, moving her tongue back strangely in her muscular mouth. Call kicked her in the chest, hard enough to have caused a human woman to gag and fall back. Ripley only grunted in discomfort and punched Call in the stomach for her troubles, dropping her to the floor and stalking off to pick through Johner's pockets. Ripley wasn't really human, wasn't really even Ripley, Call knew, but she couldn't help but see her as a human being, one that made Call happy as hell to be a machine.

Call curled up around herself, grinding her teeth together in pain. She had no womb in her abdomen to ache in agony, but the blow had dislodged something else inside of her, and it felt...strange. She wasn't certain if it were painful all the way through, or if the sensation changed beneath the bruise. Of course, most of Call's bruises repaired themselves in a matter of moments, but she lay still on the floor regardless, watching Ripley as she picked through the bodies, turning some over and smelling their wounds. She moved like one of the monsters, calculating and cold with a terrible fluency and a terrible strength. She was one of them, Call reminded herself, but with a little bit of dead human woman mixed in. She was the intelligence they'd mingled into the feral blood of the beast.

But she had little pity. As Call watched, she kicked Christie's corpse deftly out of her way so that she could take some of the ammunition from his gun.

Ripley/Alien number eight had no patience for things which stood in her way. Call shuddered. She knew she would die here, on this dismal space station, but at whose hands? The Aliens had not shown themselves for quite some time, so much so, in fact, that she began to wonder if she hadn't dreamt it all. Would Ripley kill her, once she was finished poking and biting her?

Call resigned herself to her fate, and collected her wits. She stood.

Ripley heard her movements, and crossed the corridor to smirk at her again, leering down at her from her unusual height. The android scowled up into her weird maroon eyes.

Ripley thought Call might be crying. She tasted the thin liquid on the android's soft face. Call did not move, but her respiration had accelerated and she was obviously in distress.
Ripley was quiet and thoughtful, examining Call like a lizard; she scratched the artificial skin and pressed her fingers over the hard synthetic bones. She made a ticking noise with her tongue in her mouth like the Queen.

"Please, Ripley," Call whispered, her voice an uncertain rasp, "stop it."

In the ill-lit corridor, Ripley's gaunt, muscled form was horrible and elongated by shadows. She looked more like the wet, dark monster she had become than the human she once had been. She bit Call's shoulder through the heavy material, and it oozed.

Call hissed between her teeth, not moving, praying that the next bite would be hard enough to tear something vital inside of her, to divide the circuits and make her die the way a machine dies, grinding down slowly into digital death like a long stream of zeros. Ripley pushed her hand against something in her neck and Call's vision fluttered green for an instant.

"How cruel," the alien woman whispered, gently stroking Call's cheek with the knuckles of her other hand, "to instill in a machine the desire for humanity." She peered at her thoughtfully, looking almost human in a way, and Call was starting to reply when Ripley slid the hand that had rested on the android's throat up to her chin, tilting it up and touching her mouth to hers. The contact was so light it hardly felt like a kiss at all in the first instant. Ripley seemed caught between memory and mutation, trying to recall, perhaps, exactly how kissing had felt, two centuries ago, before she had died and changed.

Call had been programmed to react in a certain way to the affections of a human being; she was intended to be a multi-purpose droid: capable of operating high technology machines, performing surgery, or providing clean, safe physical comfort to the lonely, ugly humans employed in cold and distant mining outposts on moons and dead planets. An android was a perfect whore: she was free of disease, could not become pregnant, and was easily replaceable if one of her clients felt like being overly rough. The feelings of a machine were irrelevant, because a machine did not have feelings. Call might have disagreed, but she was a machine; her opinion was not important.

Ripley's mouth was strange and slippery inside, but Call decided she found it pleasant, although she did not know why. She had an unusual, inhuman taste, not completely alien, but a sort of unique flavour evolved from her unique genetic code. Grateful simply that Ripley had ceased to prod and bite her, Call relaxed, not resisting when Ripley slid her tongue between her lips. The other woman's hands had tightened on her shoulders again, almost breaching the threshold of pain, and Call moaned faintly without knowing why.

Ripley drew away from her for an instant, smiling wickedly, her head cocked like a raptor's, and Call could see nature, sleek, sharp, and ruthless, reflecting in her glittering eyes. She was still, afraid and half-eager, as Ripley effortlessly tore open Call's heavy coveralls, tugging them off of her the way one might strip a doll of its garments.

Call was shivering when Ripley quietly pushed her to the floor, where she had to clench her teeth to stop herself from recoiling away from the blood-sticky, chilly metal. Ripley knelt beside her, and touched the white-stained bite wound on Call's shoulder so gently that it sent electric twinges of something not quite pain and not quite pleasure. Something shivery and warm twisted in Call's figurative belly, and she inhaled.

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Ripley.

She could feel the ship moving, though the minute vibrations were imperceptible to normal humans. The ship was singing through her hyper-sensitive skin, singing its glorious, monotonous machine song of energy and precision. She could sense her other brethren, but they were distant, afraid of her. She could sense their hunger, and she knew they were maddened by the scent of warm bodies, littering the corridor for several metres. In time, they would kill and devour one another; the Queen was dead; they knew no diplomacy. She smiled.

Call's pupils had dilated, and her pulse had increased about thirty-five percent. She was well-made; Ripley could smell her almost-pheromones, whatever they were in reality. She looked at Ripley almost without blinking, her silicon eyes reflecting the grim lights of the overhead lamps like green stars. Ripley touched her, indiscriminatory and without human shame, examining the texture of Call's silken white stomach and her perfectly symmetrical peach nipples. Did she have glands behind these, for nursing children? Surely not; she had no womb, or so Ripley had read. Ergo, her breasts only existed for realism, only for amusing humans who expected breasts...and this was, somehow, curiously erotic.

The mark on the android's shoulder was already healing, and Ripley poked at it as she watched it knit together, tiny filaments busily weaving themselves over and under, obedient and efficient. An interesting mechanism; yesterday's droids could not heal themselves at all and would have required maintenance for even the smallest wounds. It must have still hurt, though, for Call winced a little at the touch. Ripley did not especially care.

She stroked Call's slender side, running her thumb over her round, soft breast, and watched her shut her eyes. Her fair cheeks filled with red dye, affecting flush, and Ripley paused. She realised, in that instant, that Call was very much a beautiful thing, not only as a woman, but for what she was. She was a perfect human being. Ripley was attracted to her a great deal.

Call misread her posture, seeing the hunger in her expression, and began to sit up, startled. Angered, Ripley reacted violently, knocking her to the floor again with a blow so forceful it snapped some tiny framework in the android's fragile face, and the being screamed shortly, bringing her hands up to cover all of her face but her eyes, which were large and luminous with anguish. She smelled very good now, like oil and metal, and pain.

Ripley shuddered in arousal, biting her own lip until it bled inside, filling her mouth with the acrid taste of coppery salt. Her blood was highly alkaline, and had another human been able to taste it without damaging his or her own tissues, it would have tasted bitter and strong, much stronger than human blood. It would have tasted like poison.

It had taken the scientists many attempts before they had managed a cellular balance that would permit the blood to flow through her veins without eroding them beyond repair. Something in the ribonucleic acids within her remembered dying and dying over and over again. She was the ultimate product of intelligent evolution.

Call's muffled whimpers had ceased by the time Ripley had tugged her wrists down. Her face was slightly skewed, her nose a little crooked now, but healing. It was almost charming, as was the quivering look of terror she expressed, all guises gone but this one.

As Call watched, fearful and unspeaking, Ripley slowly removed her own clothing, lying down beside her with her eyes slitted. She slipped her arm over the android's firm breasts, turning her so she lay facing Ripley, on her side. As she held her, their breasts and bellies pressed together, and Call seemed panicked by the contact, struggling, her pupils dilating further until her eyes were almost black. The Alien stroked her ribs, soothing her as if she were a nervous kitten, and kissed her again, this time with more skill.

"I don't think you've ever actually been aroused before," Ripley said with some marvel, almost amused. Call frowned in humiliation.

"No. Not until I first saw you, lying in your cold chamber behind the locks," the android replied. That pleasant sensation hadn't lasted long, Call remembered; as fascinating as Ripley had been, she had soon shown her cruelty, her selfishness, and her true nature. Call had been too angry and afraid to feel anything but hatred and disgust for her then.

"Oh?" Ripley quietly locked her arm behind Call's back, effectively securing her in a position where she would be hard-pressed to escape.

"I was only built about a decade ago. Most of my life was spent on Sigma Five-Oh-Nine, in the programming labs, and I didn't have time to feel anything...and you've seen my late crewmen," she winced, feeling slightly irreverent and disrespectful of the lately dead, "they're not the most savory of people."

"Neither am I," Ripley said frankly, petting Call's face lightly with her index finger. Call gave her a brittle smile.

"I'm not in control of my emotions, Ripley. Maybe it's just the fact that you terrify them so much, that you might somehow have an idea what it is to be on the outer window of the architecture of humanity, always looking in, and never finding the door."

Ripley did not want the conversation to move in this direction, and was silent, rubbing Call's warm body with the arm with which she held her. Call pressed against her, timidly curling her slender arm around the other woman's muscled waist, her touch tremulous and uncertain. To Call's apparent relief, Ripley did not move as Call awkwardly embraced her, sliding her slim knee between Ripley's longer legs.

The smaller woman was very warm in her arms, and Ripley felt the mechanical pulse of Call's heart against her own. She moved her hand from Call's side, trailing it over her hips and thrusting it, with sudden force, over the slipperiness between her thighs. Call gasped again, feeling sharp fingernails scrape dangerously over the delicate pink flesh, and Ripley pushed her hand against her even as she struggled, penetrating her with two long, chilly fingers.

Call inhaled a ragged breath, her cheeks painted synthetic scarlet, and seemed paralysed, unconsciously digging her nails into Ripley's back and drawing tiny drops of blood that quivered at her fingers and stung.

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Call.

Ripley's fingernails, effectively talons, scratched lightly inside of her, teasing something that sent surges of pleasure and delicious agony through her abdomen. The simple fact that the alien woman could likely have torn her apart at this point excited her a great deal, but she found she could not move, that she was almost immobilized with the warm ache in her lower body.

Call thought, for an instant, that she ought to reciprocate, but was wary of any openings in Ripley's body: who knew where she kept the rest of her teeth? Ripley seemed content, besides, to move her fingers in and out of Call's increasingly damp opening, now and then thrusting a third finger in as well. Her thumb brushed back and forth over Call's clitoris between strokes, and Call let her eyes fall shut, losing herself in the moment, on the cold, sticky floor in an intimate embrace with the woman who had been the downfall of the Alien Queen.

That warm, rhythmic movement rapidly overtook her, sending lighting bolts of exquisite suffering along her metal spine. Ripley must have been more skilled than she had seemed, as Call soon felt as though the fingers inside of her were made of lambent fire, and she cried out softly as she came, tightening around Ripley's slippery alien fingers. Android women are programmed to experience orgasm, primarily for the enjoyment of human men, but Call had never done so before this. A thousand bright stars burst behind her eyelids, a universe dying in the anguish of pleasure.

Ripley smiled her eerie smile again when Call's eyes opened, and Call thought for that time that she might even love her. She leaned back, uncomfortably hot, and crawled backwards until her head was level with Ripley's hips, although Ripley had turned away onto her back. Ripley's hand, still damp with Call-ness, touched her hair lightly, and Call shyly moved her face forward, moving between Ripley's legs until she found the warmth in this new dark, and kissed it. Ripley was silent, but her hand twitched on Call's head, catching in her short black hair. Call pressed her tongue into the damp, curious-tasting folds of Ripley's nether opening, trying desperately not to squirm when she felt legs tighten around her.

Ripley's hands were too strong; whether she meant to or not, she held Call so tightly that the android started to suffocate. Red-purple flowers of pain gave way to the blue fog of oxygen deprivation, and Call struggled, striking her captor's thigh forcefully with her fist, to no avail.

Call was just beginning to slip out of consciousness when Ripley's grip relaxed slightly, and she inhaled so rapidly she nearly choked, her face damp and instantly clammy in the cold recycled air. Ripley screamed sharply, both in pleasure and exaltation, and far away in the perpetual metal twilight, the dying Aliens answered her with their short, anxious calls, animal and pitiful, and outside, space resounded with unending and impenetrable silence.