Curiously, it was the little things that caught Shaw's attention over the rasp of her breath in her throat, over the drumbeat of her racing heart against her ears. Pressing the shadows that lurked at her toes from her mind amongst the familiarity of these dark, expansive caverns carved into the rock, her eyes instead plucked at the details she hadn't noticed in her previous few passes amongst crewmates at the other end of the base. She knew crisp, cool, impossibly fresh air flooded these corridors, but she now knew better than to remove her helmet as their entire landing party had done multiple times while they were still alive; rather, she preferred to squint at the powdery white accumulation in the fragments of rock which had softened and obscured the seemingly organic curves etched into the walls. She admired the razor-edge flatness of the path at her feet, though she stole only a momentary glance at the wisps of dust they disturbed with each pace. She idly wondered, as she drank it all in, how it had come to be.

Despite the hulking great tower perched upon the landscape above, her initial response had been to assume it all to be a natural formation - limestone caves, torn into existence by thundering rivers or searing lava, and worn smooth by aeons. She had meandered plenty of these in her time on a far more familiar planet, wide-eyed gaze plucking apart the intricacies carved into the rock over time, experience drawing the man-made from the natural, leading her from one discovery to the next as she planted her footsteps over those placed millennia ago and washed into the abyss.

Even in the darkness, it had quickly become apparent that these walls were too uniform, too deliberate, to be anything other than designed. The mystery of the virgin atmosphere within left little doubt of that, but now that she paced these halls with days - weeks? - of wisdom colouring her vision, it became immediately obvious just how uniform they were. At this point, there was little doubt in her mind that they were carved and reinforced by machine. No hands, no matter how large and strong, could have forged these mighty arches into rock.

Still, the moment of realisation in all its black, tarry horror clung to her psyche as she marched through the sweeping right-hander beyond the warship they had left behind. With the very much living, breathing Engineer a mere pace behind her as she pushed forward into the unknown, the crumpled, beheaded corpse they had stumbled upon stained her vision, refusing to leave. Bodies weren't something she had expected to find on this voyage. There was little she had been expecting, but bodies were close to the bottom of the list.

Mind you, so were many of the other things they had found.

Apparently the one, singular corpse she had found wasn't the only one; she recalled Janek mentioning, in passing, the almighty stack of bodies Fifield and Millburn had stumbled upon during their final misadventure, piled impossibly high into a wall of carnage. As much as she would never wish such a fate upon anyone, she supposed it was somewhat fitting that Fifield's reaction to their initial discovery would be met with many more in kind. Had they just stuck together...

...they would have found another way to die, of this much she was certain.

Goddamn this forsaken place.

The weight of the Engineer weapon in her grasp was substantial, tugging at her shoulders and leaving the familiar warmth of lactic burn in her biceps as she held it against her chest with both hands, but it most certainly didn't feel as heavy as the immense bloody thing looked. There was little doubt in her mind it was constructed with vastly bigger people in mind, and although it wasn't impossible to lift, the sheer size of it would without a doubt make it challenging to operate in an emergency.

Curious how the warlike often arrived at similarly violent outcomes. She had absolutely no idea what the weapon would even do when she pulled the trigger, but despite the fact that it was manufactured as far from Earth as she could imagine, it was patently obvious from the outset what it was and how to operate it. A familiar form-factor - one that had stolen hundreds of millions of lives on her own planet, and one she was loathe to have anything to do with.

To that end, Za'il hadn't introduced her to such things until minutes ago, handing it to her with chilling nonchalance just as they stepped from the warship's bridge. Even when threatened with an intruder, he had simply handed her one of her own peoples' flamethrowers as self-defense and gone to task himself. It struck her that not only had he apparently limited his own aggression in her presence - at least, in comparison to his catastrophic awakening - it seemed he'd actively limited her exposure to violence entirely. There was little reason to ponder his motivations; given he hadn't outright killed her when he'd had the opportunity, it was safe to assume a soldier's role here was hardly different to a soldier's role back on Earth, running toward danger to defend the less robust.

Assumption, she was slowly learning, was the mother of all...you know.

It left her wondering just how much wisdom was in Janek's assumption that this was potentially a weapons facility. Za'il himself had confirmed her suspicions that it was a military base, but to what end? What were those vials they stumbled upon in that temple-like room? What had they oozed? Had she been given the opportunity to explore, safely, for weeks or months, there was little doubt she would have emerged with a fairly solid idea of what the answers to all these questions were, but that hadn't been how fate had directed her, had it?

The thousands littering the crashed warship's cargo hold left her with few leads...leads that would forever be lost on this nightmarish world, one she was intent on leaving behind as soon as possible given the horrors it had bestowed upon the one, singular Prometheus survivor.

To be fair, that was exactly where they were headed.

Seemingly endless, the immense, snaking corridor sprawled onward with enough monotony that with each step less and less of her focus was on the potential for danger, and increasingly upon her internal musings as she noted the details of the monstrous, sunken doorways that sporadically appeared against the curved walls with patterns etched into their surfaces at seemingly regular intervals, the subtle downhill gradient of the path as it wove deeper and deeper toward the centre of the base.

What was obvious at this point was just how accurate the projections of the base layout had been. The walls undulated in exactly the manner she had noted on the various holograms the Engineer had projected, with doorways smattered here and there as they marched onward and little else. There had been no extra corridors intersecting their path save the one that led back into the base from the two hangars at its outer reaches, just as the map had shown. That, she noted, they hadn't reached yet - the door sealing that path had appeared vastly more significant than those they had passed thus far.

Accuracy was something she could appreciate, as a scientist. The devil was in the details, and Za'il had provided plenty with his repeated scans, an inordinate focus placed upon one singular blip. That devil, as much as she was loathe to think of it, was conspicuously absent thus far.

Just what that pale cyan blip was, she shuddered to think. The lull of blissful ignorance was strong, no matter how much her intelligence begged her to consider the increasing likelihood that it was simply waiting for them further along, to consider the absolute certainty that it, whatever it was, stood between them and salvation.

We'll deal with it when it comes, she told herself again and again, her throat tightening as that time drew closer with every thud of their boots against the dusty path.

As they trudged on in silence, the monotony of the tunnel's increasingly familiar features was briefly broken by the dull glint of a metal pole obscured within an alcove along the left wall. Its surface had withstood the ages but not entirely unscathed, somewhat blackened and tarnished against the dim illumination within as it hung in the shadows beyond the corridor.

Za'il's voice was barely above a whisper, but in the pindrop silence it still echoed against the walls and sent a half-hearted jolt through Shaw's tense body. He silently slunk past her as she froze in place.

"He says to stay still, Doctor," David's voice whispered from within the pack as the Engineer paced forward.

Raising his weapon toward the grimy, lone pole, he tapped at a series of buttons with a finger until it emitted a soft, white cone of light in the direction of the alcove; far too dim to be any truly useful light source, she supposed it was something else entirely that he was trying to achieve. Scanning, perhaps. Regardless, it was enough light for her to see that it was not one singular pole she was staring at but the closest arm of a towering frame, easily taller than an Engineer and broad enough that its expanse filled the nook in which it resided.

Little more than a massive, dust-caked rack, its series of dark, metallic arms reaching toward the roof of the corridor distantly reminded her of the great forks of a logging trailer - especially as, upon further inspection, it appeared to hover a half-foot off the ground, the glint of rusty, circular orbs below suggestive of wheels. For what she could make of it, it seemed to be akin to an immense trolley.

A perfect hiding place.

Za'il's apprehensive, cautious investigation of the trolley was quite rightfully thorough, blips of cyan flashing before Shaw's mind's eye as her overzealous imagination filled in the blanks in the dim haze of torchlight. There was little space for any creature to hide from his search as he inched closer, examining its underside with a crouch that ought to have been far more awkward given his payload, peering past its bounds against the alcove's wall, pawing at the rear wall with the weapon's thin beam of light.

Finally, after what felt like an age, the mighty Engineer expelled a long breath and flicked the light off with a poke of his thumb. Motioning with the barrel of the weapon, he murmured something in little more than a whisper before marching onward at a pace she would have no trouble in quickly matching.

"He seems to think there was no danger to be found back there," David whispered as she drew level with the pack slung over Za'il's shoulder, "But he insists you keep your wits about you."

"Understood," she replied quietly, easing past and skipping ahead. It was safer for her up front, so the theory went; Za'il had insisted upon having her in his sight for the whole journey, and she found little reason to disagree.

The return to the monotony of the corridor's intricate ribbing was a welcome one, with nowhere for things to hide from their nervous eyes as they resumed their march toward the second hangar. The distraction had served as a timely reminder, she supposed; this place had always been far more dangerous than any of them had thought, and through the razor-sharp lens of hindsight, she could scarcely believe the absurd risks the away team had indulged in. Why had they marched straight into an unexplored structure and yanked their helmets off within moments of arriving on an alien world? Why had she thought it so imperative to explore that vast, uncharted network without weapons? Why had anyone thought it safe to allow the team to split up after discovering an ancient, beheaded, decomposed corpse? Why?

All these questionable decisions to reflect upon, though they hadn't felt like decisions at the time - all these unfathomable risks she was now painfully, painfully aware of, and yet, the presence of the most questionable decision's outcome pacing along behind her served as the only reliable barrier she could imagine to that danger. It went without saying that Jackson and his band of gun-toting mercenaries would have simply opened fire on any threat they could have stumbled upon and promptly gotten them all killed. The rest of the Prometheus crew had been even less useful in the face of calamity, save David.

Oh, David.

He had demonstrated, on several occasions, his superior strength and dexterity over his Human companions. His greater memory and quicker thought processes went without saying, and his purpose - what a concept that was to unpick - was merely to serve. Realistically, he ought to have been that reassuring presence she had long since attributed to Za'il. In fact, upon reflection, she realised that perhaps she had tried to do exactly that in her determination to retrieve and revive him.

Fat lot of good that had done, she mused, suddenly aware of the sound of the limp limbs behind her, the heels of his boots gently tapping against each other with each of the Engineer's broad, languid strides. The android had proven a trivial, momentary irritation for the mighty giant, that much she would never scrape from the forefront of her memory. It wasn't the first time she had considered his inadequacy for the task of exploring space, its relative equality with her own somewhere near the proverbial barrel scrapings, but as time droned on, it became that much more meaningful.

Realistically, the broken body slung over Za'il's shoulder had also proven more trouble than she could have anticipated; as much as he bowed to the demands of one Meredith Vickers and indeed Peter Weyland himself, as much as he appeared entirely composed and unflappable even as the Engineer severed his head, there had been a nagging discomfort about his presence that she hadn't put an awful lot of thought into. Perhaps she hadn't wanted to - but with the looming reality that she was about to be stuck in a foreign, alien vessel with him, alone and dependent on his skills, perhaps she ought to do exactly that.

He had shown utmost obedience toward those he was built to serve. He had saved Shaw's life as she chased the corpse's head from the Prometheus' loading dock with nary a thought for his own life and had been exceedingly polite about the whole ordeal. But in stark contrast to the benevolence he had displayed that day, she couldn't help but circle back to the equally as polite but far more disturbing obsession he had displayed over the monster growing within her.

Come to think of it, he hadn't exactly been good at obeying her orders - just those of Vickers and Weyland. Amongst the wonder and chaos that had ensnared the entire crew from the moment they set foot on this wretched rock, she'd almost forgotten just how many times she'd asked David what on Earth he thought he was doing, and watched on in irritation as he'd either ignored her or murmured something intended to reassure her, and proceeded with his task anyway.

A cold shiver gripped her spine as she marched onward. As much as she intended to simply reassemble her fellow survivor once they were in orbit, somehow she found herself increasingly convinced by the words of the Engineer, a complete - and violent - unknown, over the mysterious motivations of what remained of her own crew.

The monumental arc of the doors leading from the corridor and into the main tunnel toward the heart of the station were hard to miss. They could have easily flown the lifeboat through its reaches with Za'il standing on top of it, and as she craned her neck to observe the intricate details of the hooped frame encompassing its breadth, she had to wonder if that was, in fact, its intention. The corridor itself had gradually widened enough that it might have fitted such enormous things within its significant expanse, as had its second half leading into the abyss before them, but the port they'd entered from was nowhere near as wide. Logistics, she quickly decided, and chalked it up to another mystery she would never gain the answers to.

Za'il had paused to examine its outer reaches with the dim torchlight on the upper side of his weapon, helmeted face craning toward the distant roof to the same degree as hers had; there were far, far less places a creature of any kind could hide here as far as she could see. Anything that could, she reasoned, would be small - far smaller than the screeching behemoth she had watched the Engineer face.

That I saved him from, she quietly corrected herself. With half my insides threatening to fall out.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, she moved on from the gargantuan doors and into the second arm of the corridor as she was left to consider the ramifications of that encounter, too. If asked of her, she doubted she would be able to pull the same stunt again; how on Earth she'd managed it in the first place was a mystery even to her, given the state of her at the time. Faced with a towering murderer and an abyss of flailing tentacles, by all rights she should have high-tailed it in the opposite direction and left them to it.

Ah yes, of course: she'd been convinced she would die regardless. Far be it for her to ignore the cries of something so very, very Human in the face of certain death.

A deep gasp rattled against the halls as they proceeded onward. Freezing in place, she whipped her head about to gaze upward at the Engineer standing behind her; he too had come to a juddering halt, weapon raised and pointing down the hall.

At a quick glance she noted they'd barely moved on from the mighty doors, their thick frame still visible at its closest edge around the curve of the hall. Before them lay the darkened expanse of poorly-lit hall, shadows cast from the right-hand wall as it disappeared around the corner into an abyss of black-

Those were not shadows.

Those were not bloody shadows.

Tearing her eyes from the tangle of limbs cluttering the path, she quickly diverted her attention back to Za'il. He hadn't moved an inch, still transfixed upon the ancient carnage before them. It was as though the sight had taken him completely by surprise...

...but of course. He hadn't seen what they had seen in their explorations. He hadn't seen any bodies beyond those of his own crew, their fates confined to the sarcophagi on the Bridge of the downed warship. For all he knew, the station could have been evacuated and the ships left idle and full of hibernating crews forgotten.

Another thing she would never know the answer to.

A shuffle of boots against the powdery path had her snapping her gaze back toward her enormous companion. A whisper escaped him, his voice wavering as he spoke. Two more paces toward the pile of bodies and he murmured something further, his voice barely audible beneath his heavy helmet. His grip on his weapon was unsteady.

"David, what's he saying?" She asked near-silently, her knuckles white beneath their gloves as she gripped the oversized rifle in her hands. Stacked high against the wall and into the alcove of a door, the veritable mountain of huge bodies draped over one another lay in a display of wretched, hopeless chaos, twisted limbs splayed across the path in frozen horror.

"He is...expressing dismay at what he's seeing," the android responded. After a pause, he added to the observation. "What is he seeing, Doctor?"

"Bodies," he whispered hastily, swallowing the lump in