"Finally… they're all out cold."
Once Aedric confirmed that everyone was truly unconscious, he—who had also been pretending to be knocked out—slowly got to his feet. He stepped to the stone cabinet and retrieved all three Predator shoulder cannons.
The moment he did, the entire chamber began to tremble. The doors sealed shut while a new exit opened, and faint mechanical noises echoed from above. Aedric immediately understood — the Aliens were about to hatch.
"Sorry," he murmured, looking upward. "Seven of you up there are more than enough. I can't let any more be born."
He couldn't stop the Predator coming-of-age ritual, but he could control how intense it got. Leaving these people alive would just mean more hosts for Alien embryos — and more enemies to deal with.
So with a weary sigh, Aedric drew a Valyrian steel dagger from his storage space and slit each person's throat one by one.
To ensure there were no remains, he sprinkled a dose of complete 'corpse-dissolving fluid' over each wound, watching as the bodies melted away into nothingness.
Killing them painlessly in their sleep — that was the greatest mercy he could give.
He wasn't a god. He couldn't save everyone.
At best, he could save one — the heroine. So he tucked Alexa Woods into his living-space capsule, safely stored away. That was his limit.
Why hadn't he done that earlier, before descending into the pyramid? Simple — he'd only bought one signal jammer.
Lifting his wrist, Aedric checked the small device he had secretly activated earlier — a gadget he had specially exchanged from the system. It completely blocked all scans from the Predator warship above… but only within a small radius around himself.
After all, jamming the sensors of an interstellar civilization wasn't easy.
And the cost? 5,000 luck points — about the same as a whole cubic meter of living-space storage.
If he had also put the people in the sacrificial chamber to sleep while he himself was outside their jammed zone, the Predators would have noticed instantly.
And once the Predators discovered him acting outside their expectations… well, in later films they were shown to harvest strong DNA samples from powerful beings they encountered.
Aedric had no intention of ending up as a science project in some alien lab.
When he was done cleaning up the corpses, ensuring no new Alien hosts could emerge, he stored two of the shoulder cannons away and slung the third across his back. Then, glancing toward the ceiling, he activated his Shapeshifter ability — targeting the chamber above.
Up in the sacrificial chamber, chaos reigned.
It was a grotesque feast of death: the newborn Aliens were gorging themselves on their human hosts, bones cracking like drumbeats of hell.
Even with Aedric's hardened nerves, having seen countless battlefields drenched in blood, the sight through a young Alien's eyes made his stomach churn.
A rookie Shapeshifter would've vomited on the spot.
"These Aliens… are they modified?" he muttered.
Through the creature's vision, Aedric saw that their growth rate was insane — they were swelling in size literally by the second, inflating like monstrous balloons.
No wonder, in the movies, three Predators ended up surrounded by thousands of them. With this kind of growth speed, extinction was practically inevitable.
Aedric quickly withdrew from the Shapeshifter state, letting the small Alien resume its feeding. But he had already branded it with a Shapeshifter's mark, allowing him to possess it again at any time.
Then, one by one, he possessed the other six newborn Aliens, leaving a mark on each.
Originally, he'd hoped to issue them an order — to kill the Alien Queen once they matured. But he soon realized it was impossible.
The Shapeshifter's possession wasn't omnipotent. It couldn't rewrite instinct.
He couldn't make herbivores crave meat, nor make hounds chase mice instead of prey — these were traits written into DNA, unchangeable.
And in Alien society, obedience to the Queen was hardcoded.
He couldn't command them to kill her, or even disobey her summons.
The best he could do was order them to slaughter all facehuggers once they were grown, since those creatures ranked beneath them in the hierarchy. That much they'd obey.
As for the Queen… he'd have to deal with her personally.
Even though each possession was brief, the taste of raw flesh — human flesh — lingered in his senses. His stomach twisted with nausea.
But he had no choice. The Shapeshifter's first possession came with a range limit, and right now was the only time he could reach all the newborn Aliens simultaneously.
Miss this window, and he'd never have another chance.
So yes, he'd endured the disgusting experience — for strategy's sake.
"Aliens — done," Aedric exhaled, forcing the nausea down. "Facehuggers — delegated. Now there's only the Queen left."
"If I don't kill that endless breeding machine, even seven Aliens won't be enough to stem the tide."
He pictured the scene from the film — the Queen's lair, every wall crawling with eggs, enough to give anyone with trypophobia a heart attack.
Without hesitation, he donned his Valyrian steel armor, then put on a steel mask as well.
The last thing he wanted was one of those facehuggers sticking a tube down his throat.
Finally, he drew a Valyrian steel sword from his space — Longclaw — and strapped it to his hip before heading out.
As for how Longclaw, now with a silver dragon-head pommel, had ended up in his hands?
Well… Aedric had warned that big bear of a knight not to act rashly. But the man had insisted on charging ahead — and died as the only casualty of his elite unit.
Before his death, "Old Bear" Jeor Mormont had entrusted the sword to Aedric, fulfilling his son Jorah's dying wish: that this blade be used to protect Daenerys.
"Even in death, still simping," Aedric muttered. "A true diehard."
As for protecting Daenerys? Forget it. His woman didn't need another man's sword for that.
But this time… the weapon would serve perfectly for an experiment.
Time to see whether Valyrian steel could withstand Alien acid blood.
He certainly wasn't about to risk Blackfyre or Dark Sister for it — those two were his treasures.
No way he'd let them melt just to test some acid.
~~--------------------------
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