Hell Unleashed

Summary: Set post BDM. When the Blue Sun Corporation revives a 200 year old abandoned research project from Weyland-Yutani, there are devastating consequences for Mal and his crew.

A/N: I've not written anything for a while. I've not had time, to be honest, but when an idea gets into my head and won't go away I can't relax until I've a least got part of it written down, so I wrote all this on the bus ride home from a workshop in London. I'm aware I've not really got the style and characters of Firefly down right yet, but it's my first ever Firefly fanfic so bear with me; it's going to take practise.

I'd like to point out from the start that this is strictly Alien-verse. There aren't going to be any predators in this. Or at least there most probably aren't. I'm not ruling it out completely but it seems unlikely. I'm also going to say that this is AU post-Alien 3 to make it fit better with the Firefly timeline, although there may be some elements of Resurrection I incorporate into this (but not the part about Weyland-Yutani being bought out by Wal-Mart. I hated that bit.)

I do plan on making this a multi-chapter fic. I have no idea when I'll be writing more on it, as I've got two other fics supposedly on the go at the moment which I've been neglecting, but I will get round to it. Hope you like how it starts.

Disclaimer: I don't own Alien. Nor do I own Firefly, but I can promise you that if I did I'd treat it with much more love and affection than Fox has done.

Chapter One – The Bug In The Box

The boat was quiet. Silent, almost, save for the low hum of the engine steadily turning. Constantly it rotated, kicking out a trail of light into space as it provided the thrust to keep the ship moving. No one was around to hear it. The mechanic who usually tended the engine was sleeping, as was all of Serenity's crew.

All except for River.

The girl was in the cargo bay, quietly making her way towards the airlock. Her bare feet padded lightly over the floor, her soles tingling where the cool metal made contact with her skin. She liked the sensation. It felt like walking on hard dew-coated grass, but right now she wasn't able to fully enjoy it. She was too distracted looking for the noise. Not noise noise - no, the ship was too quiet for that. The thinking kind of noise that only she seemed to be able to hear, and that was coming from somewhere in the cargo hold.

Stopping just a few feet in front of the airlock door, River turned to look at a small, squat crate that was set down on the floor and tucked out of the way to one side.

There, she thought as she found what she was looking for. That's what all the noise is. The bug in the box.

That's what River had decided it was. A bug. Even though she couldn't be sure, its thoughts were so primitive and basic and messy that she didn't think it could be much else. It reminded her of a spider. Or a scorpion. That was what she pictured in her head when she thought of it.

Of course, she hadn't actually seen what was in the box. None of the crew had. Mal had been very specific about that when he and Jayne had first carried the crate on board five days ago at Persephone.

"We don't know what's in the box, but we have to deliver it untampered with or we don't get paid. That means nobody opens it."

Those had been his instructions, but River could tell he wasn't happy about it. She'd seen him replaying his confrontation with their client in his head when he'd brought the crate on board.

"So what's in the box?" Mal had asked, innocently enough at first.

At the question, the client, a Japaneseman with wispy black hair and a crooked jaw, had fixed Mal with a cold stare. "I'm paying you to deliver it for me, Captain Reynolds, not to ask questions."

Mal hadn't been fazed by the display of aggression. "A man ought to know what it is he's letting on his boat," he said, his tone sounding casual enough, but there was a definite underlying steeliness to it. Mal had gotten in trouble enough times from carrying unknown cargo to let it happen again.

The Japaneseman gritted his teeth and glared even harder. "What you are letting on your boat is some very precious cargo of mine," the man said in an accent River might have found funny if it weren't for the fact the man himself was so sinister. "Now you listen, you don't get to know what's in the box; you don't try to open the box; hell, you don't even look at the box too closely. You just make sure it gets to my friends on Copernica in the exact same condition it's in now: safe and untampered with. Understood?"

Mal didn't take kindly to being addressed like that. "No, you listen, Mr. Yutani," he responded just as aggressively, "You want me to transport that crate half way across the 'Verse for you, which means keeping it on my boat and around my crew. Now the safety of my crew ain't something I take lightly, so if there's anything in there that could cause them or me any harm, you best be honest with me about it."

The Japaneseman's eyes flashed in anger. "I am paying you a damn good fee to deliver this for me, Captain," he spat, "So if not knowing what's in the crate disquiets you, you best say so now and I'll know to take my money elsewhere."

At that, Mal had backed down. Of course he didn't really have much choice. Money was short and jobs were getting harder and harder to come by. He couldn't afford to turn down a payment like the one Kasuke Yutani was offering, but that didn't mean he had to like it.

Mal hadn't said much on the matter, but his discontent with the situation was quite plain to River. She could hear it in his head as loudly as she could hear the bug in the box.

It surprised her how loud it was, actually, the bug. It hadn't been quite so noisy when they first brought it on board. In fact, it had been so quiet River wasn't even sure that there was anything in there at all. But there was. Something quiet. Sleepy. It had been resting at first, but slowly River had heard it wake up. It had gotten louder and more distracting. Particularly tonight. It wouldn't let her sleep, so she'd come to find it. She wanted to know what all the noise was about.

River lowered herself to the floor and knelt in front of the crate. She stared at it for a few moments, listening. There was no change in the chaotic haze of noise coming from the bug.

"Hello," River said simply.

There seemed to be a change then: some flicker of coherence among the random blur of noise. The bug could hear her. It knew she was there.

River leant in closer to the crate and pressed her ear to the metal, trying to pry apart the scrambled mess of thought into strings of meaning.

Dark.

That much she could make out. Everything was dark. The bug's world had always been dark.

Confined. Smothered. A burning need to break out.

River felt herself being drawn further in. The bug's emotions seemed to seep through into her own mind, forming patterns she recognised, being translated into human thoughts she could understand.

A shell. An egg. A cool yolk of mucus and acid enveloping her.

River shivered.

Survive. Reproduce.

The basic instincts of every living creature, burning so strongly in the bug's mind.

Kill.

The intensity of that took her by surprise. Such ferocity. A burning, primal viciousness that seemed to define everything about the bug's existence. It knew she was there and what it wanted was to kill her.

Survive. Reproduce. KILL.

No, it wanted more than just to kill her, River realised.

It wanted to force its way inside her. To invade her. Violate her. Tear her to pieces and break out of her from the inside…

With a scream River leapt back from the crate, shocked by what she'd just felt. So this was what had been lying dormant in the crate for five days. This shong meng de gwau. But now it was fully awake; River could hear it, louder than ever. She knew what it wanted. It wanted to hurt her; to hurt all of them.

But she wouldn't let it.

With a yell of anger River suddenly kicked the crate, applying her foot with just the right force and angle to send it hurtling across the floor towards the airlock. It collided with the door with a loud clang before coming to a stop.

River darted across to the controls to the airlock, her mind completely focussed.

It wants to be let out, she thought. Then I'll let it out. Squish the bug. Whoosh.

She hit the button to begin opening the outer airlock door.

Pressure drop across the airlock will be sufficient to suck out the crate in point two six seconds, River thought as the hatch lowered. Allowing a four point three eight second window in which to restablise pressure. Adequate time to ensure safety of all on board. Squish. Bug dead.

The outer hatch had fully descended now, and River turned her attention to the button that opened the inner door. The noise from the bug was so loud. Vicious and dangerous. It had to be silenced.

She was just reaching out to press the button when she felt her hand be suddenly snatched away, and heard a familiar voice shouting her name.

"River!"

Chinese translations:

shong meng de gwau – vicious monster

A/N: That felt a tad choppy, if I'm honest. Partly because it wasn't written in the ideal circumstances, and mostly because I'm just not used to writing River. I'm not too sure how to approach it. I don't know how logical or how seemingly random to make her. Like I said, it'll take practise, although next time I'm likely not to write things so much from River's perspective.

So, hope you liked it and I'll try and work on an update.